STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 

 
 Thomas Edison 
 
 Sir Henry Bessemer 
 
 Robert Fulton 
 
 A GROUP OF INVENTORS 
 
 Alexander Graham Bell 
 Hudson Maxim
 
 /STORIES OF 
 USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 
 BY 
 
 s. E:'FORMAN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1 
 " ADVANCED CIVICS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO.
 
 Copyright, 1911, by 
 .THE CKNTUKY Co. 
 
 Published S t ptcmber, 1911
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN this little book I have given the history of those 
 inventions which are most useful to man in his 
 daily life. I have told the story of the Match, 
 the Stove, the Lamp, the Forge, the Steam-Engine, the 
 Plow, the Reaper, the Mill, the Loom, the House, the 
 Carriage, the Boat, the Clock, the Book, and the Mes- 
 sage. From the history of these inventions we learn 
 how man became the master of the world of nature 
 around him, how he brought fire and air and earth 
 and water under his control and compelled them to 
 do his will and his work. When we trace the growth 
 of these inventions we at the same time trace the 
 course of human progress. These stories, therefore, 
 are stories of human progress; they are chapters in 
 the history of civilization. 
 
 And they are chapters which have not hitherto 
 been brought together in one book. Monographs on 
 most of the subjects included in this book have ap- 
 peared, and excellent books about modern inventions 
 have been written, but as far as I know, this is the 
 v
 
 PREFACE 
 
 first time the evolution of these useful inventions 
 has been fully traced in a single volume. 
 
 While preparing the stories I have received many 
 courtesies from officers in the Library of Congress 
 and from those of the National Museum. 
 
 S. E. F. 
 May, 1911. 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 VI
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FOREWORD ix 
 
 I THE MATCH . . ... 3 
 
 II THE STOVE 13 
 
 III THE LAMP 28 
 
 IV THE FORGE 38 
 
 V THE STEAM-ENGINE 54 
 
 VI THE PLOW 73 
 
 VII THE REAPER 85 
 
 VIII THE MILL 97 
 
 IX THE LOOM log 
 
 X THE HOUSE 123 
 
 XI THE CARRIAGE 144 
 
 XII THE CARRIAGE (Continued) 156 
 
 XIII THE BOAT 166 
 
 XIV THE CLOCK .187 
 
 XV THE BOOK 203 
 
 XVI THE MESSAGE , . : 222 
 
 Vll
 
 A FOREWORD 1 
 
 THESE stories of useful inventions are chapters 
 in the history of civilization and this little book 
 is a book of history. Now we are told by Herodotus, 
 one of the oldest and greatest of historians, that when 
 the writer of history records an event he should state 
 the time and the place of its happening. In some 
 kinds of history in the history of the world's wars, 
 for example, or in the history of its politics this 
 is strictly true. When we are reading of the battle 
 of Bunker Hill we should be told precisely when 
 and where the battle was fought, and in an account 
 of the Declaration of Independence the time and 
 place of the declaration should be given. But in the 
 history of inventions we cannot always be precise as 
 to dates and places. Of course it cannot be told 
 when the first plow or the first loom or the first clock 
 was made. Inventions like these had their origin 
 far back in the earliest ages when there was no such 
 
 1 Where readers are quite young the Foreword had better be 
 postponed until the stories themselves are read. 
 
 ix
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 person as a historian. And when we come to the 
 history of inventions in more recent times the his- 
 torian is still sometimes unable to discover the pre- 
 cise time and place of an invention. 
 
 It is in the nature of things that the origin of 
 an invention should be surrounded by uncertainty and 
 doubt. An invention, as we shall see presently, is 
 nearly always a response to a certain want. The 
 world wants something and it promises a rich reward 
 to one who will furnish the desired thing. The in- 
 ventor, recognizing the want, sets to work to make 
 the thing, but he conducts his experiments in secret, 
 for the reason that he does not want another to steal 
 his ideas and get ahead of him. We can see that this 
 is true in respect to the flying machine. The first ex- 
 periments with the flying machine were conducted in 
 secret in out of the way places and pains were taken 
 that the public should know as little as possible about 
 the new machine and about the results of the experi- 
 ments. The history of the flying machine will of 
 course have to be written, but because of the secrecy 
 and mystery which surrounded the beginnings of the 
 invention it will be extremely difficult for the future 
 historian to tell precisely when the first flying ma- 
 chine was invented or to name the inventor. If it is 
 so difficult to get the facts as to the origin of an in- 
 x
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 vention in our own time, how much more difficult it is 
 to clear away the mystery and doubt which surround 
 the beginnings of an invention in an age long past! 
 
 In a history of inventions, then, the historian can- 
 not be precise in respect to dates and places. For- 
 tunately this is not a cause for deep regret. It is 
 not a great loss to truth that we cannot know pre- 
 cisely when the first book was printed, nor does it 
 make much difference whether that book was printed 
 in Holland or in Germany. In giving an account of 
 an invention we may be content to treat the matter 
 of time and place broadly, for the story is apt to 
 carry us through a stretch of years that defies com- 
 putation, a stretch that is immensely longer than the 
 life of any nation. For our purpose these millen- 
 niums, these long stretches of time, may be thought 
 of as being divided into three great periods, namely: 
 the primitive, the ancient, and the modern period. 
 Even a division so broad as this is not satisfactory, 
 for in the progress of their inventions all countries 
 have not kept equal step with the march of time. In 
 some things ancient Greece was modern, while in most 
 things modern Alaska is primitive and modern China 
 is ancient. Nevertheless it will be convenient at 
 times in this book to speak of the primitive, the an- 
 cient and the modern periods, and it will be useful to 
 xi
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 regard the primitive period as beginning with the 
 coming of man on earth and extending to the year 
 5000 B. C; the ancient period may be thought of as 
 beginning with the year 5000 B. C. and ending with 
 the year 476 A. D., leaving for the modern period 
 the years that have passed since 476 A. D. 
 
 In tracing the growth of an invention the peri- 
 ods indicated above can serve as a time-guide only 
 for those parts of the world where the course of civ- 
 ilization has taken its way, for invention and civiliza- 
 tion have traveled the same road. The region of 
 the world's most advanced civilization includes the 
 lands bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, Central 
 and Northern Europe, the British Isles, North Amer- 
 ica, South America and Australia. It is within this 
 region that we shall follow the development of what- 
 ever invention is under consideration. When speak- 
 ing of the first forms of an invention, however, it 
 will sometimes be necessary, when an illustration is 
 desired, to draw upon the experience of people who 
 are outside of the wall of civilization. The reason 
 for going outside is plain. The first and simplest 
 forms of the useful inventions have utterly perished in 
 civilized countries, but they still exist among savage 
 and barbarous peoples and it is among such peoples 
 that the first forms must be studied. Thus in the 
 xii
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 story of the clock, we must go to a far-off peninsula 
 of Southern Asia (p. 190) for an illustration of the 
 beginning of our modern time-piece. Such a depar- 
 ture from the beaten track of civilization does not 
 spoil the story, for as a rule, the rude forms of inven- 
 tions found among the lowest races of to-day are 
 precisely the same forms that were in use among the 
 Egyptians and Greeks when they were in their lowest 
 state. 
 
 When studying the history of an invention there 
 are two facts or principles which should ever be borne 
 in mind. The first principle is this: Necessity is 
 the mother of invention. This principle was touched 
 upon when it was said that an invention appears as a 
 response to a want. When the world wants an in- 
 vention it usually gets it and makes the most of it, 
 but it will have nothing to do with an invention it 
 does not want. The steam-engine was invented two 
 thousand years ago (p. 55) but the world then had 
 no work for steam to do, so the invention attracted 
 little attention and came to naught. About two hun- 
 dred years ago, however, man did want the services 
 of steam and inventors were not long in supplying the 
 engine that was needed. About a hundred years ago 
 the broad prairie lands of the United States began to 
 be tilled but it was soon found that the vast areas 
 xiii
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 could not be plowed and that the immense crops could 
 not be harvested by the old methods. So improve- 
 ments upon the plow and the reaper began to be made 
 and in time the steam gang-plow and the complete 
 harvester were invented. When the locomotive first 
 came into use a simple handbrake was used to stop the 
 slow-going trains, but as the size and the speed of 
 trains increased the handbrake became more and more 
 unsatisfactory. Sometimes a train would run as much 
 as a half mile beyond a station before it could be 
 stopped and then when " backed " it would again 
 pass beyond the station. The problem of stopping 
 the train promptly became fully as important as start- 
 ing it. The problem was solved by the invention of 
 the air-brake. And thus it has been with all the in- 
 ventions which surround us: necessity has been the 
 mother of them all. 
 
 The other principle is that a mechanical inven- 
 tion is a growth, or, to state the truth in another 
 way, an invention nearly always is simply an im- 
 provement upon a previous invention. The loom, 
 for example, was not invented by a particular person 
 at a particular time; it did not spring into existence 
 in a day with all its parts perfected; it grew, century 
 by century, piece by piece. In the stories which will 
 follow the steps in the growth of an invention are 
 xiv
 
 A FOREWORD 
 
 shown in the illustrations. These pictures are not 
 for amusement but for study. As you read, examine 
 them carefully and they will teach you quite as much 
 about the growth of the invention as you can be taught 
 by words. 
 
 xv
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL 
 INVENTIONS 
 
 THE MATCH 
 
 DID you ever think how great and how many 
 are the blessings of fire? Try to think of a 
 world without fire. Suppose we should wake up 
 some bitter cold morning and find that all the fires 
 in the world were out, and that there was no way 
 of rekindling them; that the art of kindling a fire 
 had been lost. In such a plight we should all soon 
 be shivering with the cold, for our stoves and fur- 
 naces could give us no warmth ; we should all soon 
 be hungry, for we could not cook our food; we 
 should all soon be idle, for engines could not draw 
 trains, wheels of factories could not turn, and trade 
 and commerce would come to a standstill; at night 
 we would grope in darkness, for we could use neither 
 lamp nor gas nor electric light. It is easy to see 
 that without fire, whether for light or heat, the life 
 of man would be most wretched. 
 
 There never was a time when the world was with- 
 out fire, but there was a time when men did not 
 3
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 know how to kindle fire; and after they learned how 
 to kindle one, it was a long, long time before they 
 learned how to kindle one easily. In these days we 
 can kindle a fire without any trouble, because we can 
 easily get a match; but we must remember that the 
 match is one of the most wonderful things in the 
 world, and that it took men thousands of years to 
 learn how to make one. Let us learn the history of 
 this familiar little object, the match. 
 
 Fire was first given to man by nature itself. 
 When a forest is set on fire by cinders from a neigh- 
 boring volcano, or when a tree is set ablaze by a 
 thunderbolt, we may say that nature strikes a match. 
 In the early history of the world, nature had to 
 kindle all the fires, for man by his own effort was 
 unable to produce a spark. The first method, then, 
 of getting fire for use was to light sticks of wood at 
 a flame kindled by nature by a volcano, perhaps, 
 or by a stroke of lightning. These firebrands (Fig. 
 i ) were carried to the home and used in kindling 
 the fires there. The fire secured in this way was 
 carefully guarded and was kept burning as long as 
 possible. But the flame, however faithfully watched, 
 would sometimes be extinguished. A sudden gust 
 of wind or a sudden shower would put it out. Then 
 a new firebrand would have to be secured, and this 
 often meant a long journey and a deal of trouble. 
 
 In the course of time a man somewhere in the 
 world hit upon a plan of kindling a fire without hav- 
 ing any fire to begin with; that is to say, he hit upon 
 4
 
 THE MATCH 
 
 FIG. 1. GETTING A MATCH FROM NATURE. 
 
 a plan of producing a fire by artificial means. He 
 knew that by rubbing his hands together very hard 
 and very fast he could make them very warm. By 
 trial he learned that by rubbing two pieces of dry 
 wood together he could make them very warm. 
 Then he asked himself the question: Can a fire be 
 kindled by rubbing two pieces 
 of wood together, if they are 
 rubbed hard enough? He 
 placed upon the ground a piece 
 of perfectly dry wood (Fig. 2) 
 and rubbed this with the end of 
 a stick until a groove was 
 made. In the groove a fine 
 dust of wood a kind of saw- 
 dust was made by the rub- 
 bing. He went on rubbing 
 
 5 
 
 FIG. 2. PRIMITIVE FIRE- 
 MAKING. THE STICK- 
 AND-GROOVE METHOD.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 hard and fast, and, behold, the dust in the groove 
 began to glow! He placed some dry grass upon 
 the embers and blew upon them with his breath, 
 and the grass burst into a flame. 1 Here for the 
 first time a man kindled a fire for himself. He 
 had invented the match, the greatest invention, per- 
 haps, in the history of the world. 
 
 The stick-and-groove method as we may call it 
 of getting a flame was much better than guard- 
 ing fire and carrying it from place to place; yet it 
 was, nevertheless, a very clumsy method. The wood 
 used had to be perfectly dry, and the rubbing re- 
 quired a vast amount of work and patience. Some- 
 i times it would take hours to 
 produce the spark. After a 
 while and doubtless it was a 
 very long while it was found 
 that it was better to keep the 
 end of the stick in one spot and 
 twirl it (Fig. 3) than it was to 
 
 plow to and fro with it. The 
 
 FIG. 3.- THE FIRE DRILL. twirlin g motion made a hole in 
 
 (Simple Form.) which the heat produced by the 
 
 friction was confined in a small 
 
 space. At first the drilling was done by twirling the 
 
 stick between the palms of the hands, but this made 
 
 1 Mr. Walter Hough of the National Museum, himself a wizard 
 m the art of fire-making, tells me that a blaze cannot be pro- 
 duced simp y by ru b b in g sticks together. All that can be done 
 by rubbing is to make them glow
 
 THE MATCH 
 
 the hands too hot for comfort, and the fire-makers 
 learned to do the twirling with a cord or thong l 
 wrapped around the stick (Fig. 4). You see, the 
 upper end of the stick which 
 serves as a drill turns in a cav- 
 ity in a mouthpiece which the 
 operator holds between his 
 teeth. If you should under- 
 take to use a fire-drill of this 
 kind, it is likely that your jaws 
 would be painfully jarred. 
 
 By both the methods de- F ' G - 4-- FIRE DRILL 
 
 ./ , , , c , (Improved Form.) 
 
 scribed above, the fire was ob- 
 tained by rubbing or friction. The friction method 
 seems to have been used by all primitive peoples, 
 and it is still in use among savages in various parts 
 
 t of the world. 
 
 The second step in fire-making 
 was taken when it was discovered 
 that a spark can be made by strik- 
 ing together a stone and a piece of 
 . Y' ' ron ore - Strike a piece of flint 
 against a piece of iron ore known 
 as pyrites, or fire-stone, and you will 
 make sparks fly. (Fig 5.) Let 
 the se sparks fall into small pieces 
 of dried moss or powdered char- 
 coal, and the tinder, as the moss or the charcoal is 
 called, will catch fire. It will glow, but it will not 
 1 A narrow strip of leather. 
 
 7
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 blaze. Now hold a dry splinter in the glowing tin- 
 der, and fan or blow with the breath and the splinter 
 will burst into a flame. If you will tip your splinter 
 with sulphur before you place it in the burning tin- 
 der, you will get a flame at once. This was the 
 strike-a-light, or percussion, method of making a fire. 
 It followed the friction method, and was a great im- 
 provement upon it because it took less work and a 
 shorter time to get a blaze. The regular outfit for 
 
 FIG. 6. TINDER BOX, FLINT, STEEL, AND SULl'HUK- 
 TIPPED SPLINTERS. 
 
 fire-making with the strike-a-light consisted of a tin- 
 der-box, a piece of steel, a piece of flint, and some 
 splinters tipped with sulphur (Fig. 6). The flint 
 and steel were struck together,' and the sparks thus 
 made fell into the tinder and made it glow. A splin- 
 ter was applied as quickly as possible to the tinder, 
 and when a flame was produced the candle which 
 rested in the socket on the tinder-box was lighted. 
 As soon as the splinter was lighted the cover was re-
 
 THE MATCH 
 
 placed on the tinder-box, so as to smother the glow- 
 ing tinder and save it for another time. 
 
 The strike-a-light method was discovered many 
 thousands of years ago, and it has been used by 
 nearly all the civilized nations of the world. 1 And 
 it has not been so very long since this method was 
 laid aside. There are many people now living who 
 remember when the flint and steel and tinder-box 
 were in use in almost every household. 
 
 About three hundred years ago a third method 
 of producing fire was discovered. If you should drop 
 a small quantity of sulphuric acid into a mixture of 
 chlorate of potash and sugar, you would produce a 
 bright flame. Here was a hint for a new way of 
 making a fire; and a thoughtful man in Vienna, in 
 the seventeenth century, profited by the hint. He 
 took one of the sulphur-tipped splinters which he 
 was accustomed to use with his tinder-box, and 
 dipped it into sulphuric acid, and then applied it to 
 a mixture of chlorate of potash and sugar. The 
 splinter caught fire and burned with a blaze. Here 
 was neither friction nor percussion. The chemical 
 substances were simply brought together, and they 
 caught fire of themselves; that is to say, they caught 
 fire by chemical action. 
 
 The discovery made by the Vienna man led to a 
 
 1 The ancient Greeks used a burning-glass or -lens for kindling 
 fire. The lens focused the sun's rays upon a substance that 
 would burn easily and set it afire. The burning-glass was not 
 connected in any way with the development of the match.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 new kind of match the chemical match. A prac- 
 tical outfit for fire-making now consisted of a bottle 
 of sulphuric acid (vitriol) and a bundle of splints 
 tipped with sulphur, chlorate of potash, and sugar. 
 Matches of this kind were very expensive, costing as 
 much as five dollars a hundred; besides, they were 
 very unsatisfactory. Often when the match was 
 dipped into the acid it would not catch fire, but would 
 smolder and sputter and throw the acid about and 
 spoil both the clothes and the temper. These dip- 
 splint matches were used in the eighteenth century by 
 those who liked them and could afford to buy them. 
 They did not, however, drive out the old strike-a-light 
 and tinder-box. 
 
 In the nineteenth century the century in which 
 so many wonderful things were done the fourth 
 step in the development of the match was taken. In 
 1827, John Walker, a druggist in a small English 
 town, tipped a splint with sulphur, chlorate of potash, 
 and sulphid of antimony, and rubbed it on sand- 
 paper, and it burst into flame. The druggist had 
 discovered the first friction-chemical match, the kind 
 we use to-day. It is called friction-chemical because 
 it is made by mixing certain chemicals together and 
 rubbing them. Although Walker's match did not 
 require the bottle of acid, nevertheless it was not a 
 good one. It could be lighted only by hard rub- 
 bing, and it sputtered and threw fire in all direc- 
 tions. In a few years, however, phosphorus was 
 substituted on the tip for antimony, and the change 
 10
 
 THE MATCH 
 
 worked wonders. The match could now be lighted 
 with very little rubbing, and it was no longer neces- 
 sary to have sandpaper upon which to rub it. It 
 would ignite when rubbed on any dry surface, and 
 there was no longer any sputtering. This was the 
 phosphorus match, the match with which we are so 
 familiar. 
 
 After the invention of the easily-lighted phos- 
 phorus match there was no longer use for the dip- 
 splint or the strike-a-light. 
 The old methods of getting a 
 blaze were gradually laid 
 aside and forgotten. The 
 first phosphorus matches were 
 sold at twenty-five cents a 
 block a block (Fig. 7) 
 containing a hundred and 
 forty-four matches. They 
 were used by few. Now a 
 hundred matches can be 
 bought for a cent. It is said 
 that in the United States we use about 150,000,000,- 
 ooo matches a year. This, on an average, is about 
 five matches a day for each person. 
 
 There is one thing against the phosphorus match : 
 it ignites too easily. If one is left on the floor, 
 it may be ignited by stepping upon it, or by 
 something falling upon it. We may step on a phos- 
 phorus match unawares, light it, leave it burn- 
 ing, and thus set the house on fire. Mice often 
 II 
 
 7. A " BLOCK 
 MATCHES.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 have caused fires by gnawing the phosphorus matches 
 
 and igniting them. In one city thirty destructive 
 
 fires were caused in one year by mice lighting matches. 
 
 To avoid accident by matches, the safety match 
 
 (Fig. 8) has re- 
 cently been invented. 
 The safety match 
 does not contain 
 phosphorus. The 
 
 FIG. 8. A BOX OF MODERN SAFETY phoSphorUS is mixed 
 
 MATCHES. L r j 
 
 with fine sand and 
 
 glued to the side of the box in which the matches are 
 sold. The safety match, therefore, cannot be lighted 
 unless it is rubbed on the phosphorus on the outside 
 of the box. It is so much better than the old kind of 
 phosphorus match that it is driving the latter out of 
 the market. Indeed, in some places it is forbidden 
 by law to sell any kind of match but the safety match. 
 
 The invention of the safety match is the last step 
 in the long history of fire-making. The first match 
 was lighted by rubbing, and the match of our own 
 time is lighted by rubbing; yet what a difference there 
 is between the two! With the plowing-stick or fire- 
 drill it took strength and time and skill to get a 
 blaze; with the safety match an awkward little child 
 can kindle a fire in a second. 
 
 And how long it has taken to make the match as 
 good as it is I The steam-engine, the telegraph, 
 the telephone, and the electric light were all in use 
 before the simple little safety match. 
 
 12
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 FROM the story of the match you have learned 
 how man through long ages of experience 
 gradually mastered the art of making a fire easily 
 and quickly. In this chapter, and in several which 
 are to follow, we shall have the history of those in- 
 ventions which have enabled man to make the best 
 use of fire. Since the first and greatest use of fire 
 is to cook food and keep the body warm, our account 
 of the inventions connected with the use of fire may 
 best begin with the story of the stove. 
 
 The most important uses of fire were taught by 
 fire itself. As the primitive man stood near the 
 flames of the burning tree and felt their pleasant 
 glow, he learned that fire may add to bodily com- 
 fort; and when the flames swept through a forest 
 and overtook a deer and baked it, he learned that 
 fire might be used to improve the quality of his food. 
 The hint was not lost. He took a burning torch 
 to his cave or hut and kindled a fire on his floor 
 of earth. His dwelling filled with smoke, but he 
 could endure the discomfort for the sake of the 
 fire's warmth, and for the sake of the toothsomeness 
 of the cooked meats. After a time a hole was made 
 in the roof of the hut, and through this hole the 
 13
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 smoke passed out. Here was the first stove. The 
 primitive stove was the entire house; the floor \v.is 
 the fireplace and the hole in the roof was the 
 chimney (Fig. i). The word "stove" or 
 
 FIG. I. THE PRIMITIVE STOVE. 
 
 meant " a heated room." So that if we should say 
 that at first people lived in their stoves, we should 
 say that which is literally true. 
 
 Early inventions in cooking consisted in simple 
 14
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 devices for applying flame directly to the thing which 
 was to be cooked. The first roasting was doubtless 
 done by fastening the flesh to a pole placed in a 
 horizontal position above the fire and supported as 
 
 is shown in Figure 2. 1 The horizontal bar called a 
 spit was originally of wood, but after man had learned 
 to work in metals an iron bar was used. When 
 one side of the flesh was roasted the spit was turned 
 and the other side was exposed to the flames. The 
 spit of the primitive age was the parent of the mod- 
 ern grill and broiler. 
 
 Food was first boiled in a hole in the ground. A 
 hole was filled with water into which heated stones 
 were thrown. The stones, by giving off their heat, 
 caused the water to boil in a very short time. After 
 
 1 Several of the illustrations in this chapter are reproduced 
 through the courtesy of the Boston Stove C>. 
 
 15
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 the art of making vessels of clay was learned, food 
 was boiled in earthen pots suspended above the fire. 
 
 The methods of warming the house and cooking 
 the food which have just been described were cer- 
 tainly crude and inconvenient, but it was thousands 
 of years before better methods were invented. The 
 long periods of savagery and barbarism passed and 
 the period of civilization was ushered in, but civ- 
 ilization did not at once bring better stoves. Neither 
 the ancient Egyptians nor the ancient Greeks knew 
 how to heat a house comfortably and conveniently. 
 All of them used the primitive stove a fire on 
 the floor and a hole in the roof. In the house of 
 an ancient Greek there was usually one room which 
 could be heated when there was need, and this was 
 called the "black-room" (atrium) black from 
 the soot and smoke which escaped from the fire on 
 the floor. 
 
 But we must not speak harshly of the ancients 
 because they were slow in improving their methods 
 of heating, for in truth the modern world has not 
 done as well in this direction as might have been ex- 
 pected. In a book of travels written only sixty 
 years ago may be found the following passage: " In 
 Normandy, where the cold is severe and fire expen- 
 sive, the lace-makers, to keep themselves warm and 
 to save fuel, agree with some farmer who has cows 
 in winter quarters to be allowed to carry on their 
 work in the society of the cattle. The cows would 
 be tethered in a long row on one side of the apart- 
 16
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 ment, and the lace-makers sit on the ground on the 
 other side with their feet buried in the straw." 
 Thus the lace-makers kept themselves warm by the 
 heat which came from the bodies of the cattle; the 
 cows, in other words, served as stoves. This barba- 
 rous method of heating, was practised in some parts of 
 France less than sixty years ago. 
 
 FIG. 3- A ROMAN BRAZIER. 
 
 The ancient peoples around the Mediterranean 
 may be excused for not making great progress in the 
 art of heating, for their climate was so mild that 
 they seldom had use for fire in the house. Never- 
 theless there was in use among these people an in- 
 vention which has in the course of centuries de- 
 veloped into the stove of to-day. This was the 
 brazier, or warming-pan (Fig. 3). The brazier
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 was filled with burning charcoal and was carried 
 from room to room as it was needed. The un- 
 pleasant gases which escaped from the charcoal were 
 made less offensive, but not less unhealthy, by burn- 
 ing perfumes with the fuel. The brazier has never 
 been entirely laid aside. It is still used in Spain and 
 in other warm countries where the necessity for fire 
 is rarely felt. 
 
 The brazier satisfied the wants of Greece, but the 
 colder climate of Rome required something better; 
 and in their efforts to invent something better, the 
 ancient Romans made real progress in the art of 
 warming their houses. They built a fire-room 
 called a hypocaust in the cellar, and, by means 
 of pipes made of baked clay, they connected the 
 hypocaust with different parts of the house (Fig. 
 4). Heat and smoke passed up together through 
 these pipes. The poor ancients, it seems, were for- 
 ever persecuted by smoke. However, after the 
 wood in the hypocaust was once well charred, the 
 smoke was not so troublesome. The celebrated 
 baths (club-rooms) of ancient Rome were heated 
 by means of hypocausts with excellent results. In- 
 deed, the hypocaust had many of the features and 
 many of the merits of our modern furnace. Its 
 weak feature was that it had no separate pipe to 
 carry away the smoke. But as there were no chim- 
 neys yet in the world, it is no wonder there was no 
 such pipe. 
 
 The Romans made quite as much progress in the 
 18
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 art of cooking as they did in the art of heating. 
 Perhaps the world has never seen more skilful cooks 
 than those who served in the mansions of the rich 
 
 FIG. 4. A ROMAN HYPOCAUST. 
 
 during the period of the Roman Empire (27 B.C. 
 476 A.D.). In this period the great men at Rome 
 abandoned their plain way of living and became 
 gourmands. One of them wished for the neck of 
 '9
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 a crane, that he might enjoy for a longer time his 
 food as it descended. This demand for tempting 
 viands developed a race of cooks who were artists in 
 their way. Upon one occasion a king called for a 
 certain kind of fish. The fish could not be had, but 
 the cook was equal to the emergency. " He cut a 
 large turnip to the perfect imitation of the fish de- 
 sired, and this he fried and seasoned so skilfully 
 that his majesty's taste was exquisitely deceived, and 
 he praised the root to his guests as an excellent fish." 
 Such excellent cooking could not be done on a primi- 
 tive stove, and along with the improvements in the 
 art of cooking, there was a corresponding improve- 
 ment at Rome in the art of stove-making. 
 
 When Rome fell (476 A.D.), many of the best 
 features of her civilization perished with her. 
 Among the things that were lost to the world were 
 the Roman methods of cooking and heating. When 
 the barbarians came in at the front door, the cooks 
 fled from the kitchen. The hardy northerners had 
 no taste for dainty cooking. Hypocausts ceased to 
 be used, and were no longer built. For several 
 hundred years, in all the countries of Europe, the 
 fireplace was located, as of old, on the floor in the 
 center of the room, while the smoke was allowed to 
 pass out through a hole in the roof. 
 
 The eleventh century brought a great improve- 
 ment in the art of heating, and the improvement 
 came from England. About the time of the Con- 
 quest (1066) a great deal of fighting was done on 
 20
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 the roofs of English fortresses, and the smoke com- 
 ing up through the hole in the center of the roof 
 proved 'to be troublesome to the soldiers. So the fire 
 was moved from the center of the floor to a spot 
 near an outside wall, and an opening was made 
 in the wall just above the fire, so that the smoke 
 could pass out. Here was the origin of the chim- 
 ney. Projecting from the wall above the fire was 
 a hood, which served to direct the smoke to the 
 opening. At first the opening for the smoke ex- 
 tended but a few feet from the fire, but it was soon 
 found that the further up 
 the wall the opening ex- 
 tended the better was the 
 draft. So the chimney was 
 made to run diagonally up 
 the wall as far as possi- 
 
 FIG . 5. A CHIMNEY AND FIREPLACE IN AN OLD ENGLISH CASTLE, 
 21
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 ble. The next and last step in the development of 
 the chimney was to make a recess in the wall as 
 a fireplace, and to build a separate structure of 
 masonry the chimney for the smoke. By the 
 middle of the fourteenth century chimneys were 
 usually built in this way (Fig. 5). As the fireplace, 
 and chimney cleared the house of soot and smoke, 
 they grew in favor rapidly. By the end of the fif- 
 teenth century they were found in the homes of 
 nearly all civilized people. 
 
 The open fireplace was always cheerful, and it 
 was comfortable when you were close to it; but it 
 did not heat all parts of the room equally. That 
 part next to the fireplace might be too warm for com- 
 fort, while in another part of the room it might be 
 freezing. About the end of the fifteenth century 
 efforts were made to distribute heat throughout the 
 room more evenly. These efforts led to the in- 
 vention of the modern stove. We have learned 
 that the origin of the stove is to be sought in the 
 ancient brazier. In the middle ages the brazier in 
 France took on a new form. Here was a fire-box 
 (Fig. 6) with openings at the bottom for drafts of 
 air and arrangements at the top for cooking things. 
 This French warming-pan (rcchaud) was the con- 
 necting-link between the ancient brazier and the mod- 
 ern stove. All it lacked of being a stove was a 
 pipe to carry off the smoke, and this was added by 
 a Frenchman named Savot, about two hundred years 
 ago. We owe the invention of the chimney to Eng- 
 22
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 land, but for the stove we are indebted to France. 
 The Frenchman built an iron fire-box, with open- 
 ings for drafts, and connected the box with the chim- 
 ney by means of an iron flue or pipe. Here was 
 a stove which could be placed in the middle of the 
 
 <* 
 
 FIG. 6. A STOVE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 room, or In any part of the room where it was de- 
 sirable, and which would send out its heat evenly in 
 all directions. 
 
 The first stoves were, of course, clumsy and un- 
 satisfactory; but inventors kept working at them, 
 making them better both for cooking and for heat- 
 23
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 ing. By the middle of the nineteenth century 
 the stove was practically what it is to-day (Fig. 
 7). Stoves proved to be so much better than fire- 
 places, that the latter were gradually replaced in 
 large part by the former. Our affection, however, 
 
 FIG. 7. THE A1ODEKN STOVE. 
 
 for a blazing fire is strong, and it is not likely that 
 the old-fashioned fireplace (Fig. 8) will ever en- 
 tirely disappear. 
 
 The French stove just described is intended to 
 heat only one room. If a house with a dozen rooms 
 is to be heated, a dozen stoves are necessary. About 
 one hundred years ago there began to appear an 
 invention by which a house of many rooms could be 
 24
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 heated by means of one stove. This invention was 
 the furnace. Place in the cellar a large stove, and 
 run pipes from the stove to the different rooms of the 
 
 FIG. 8. AN OLD-FASHIONED FIREPLACE AND OVEN. 
 
 house, and you have a furnace (Fig. 9). Doubt- 
 less we got our idea of the furnace from the Roman 
 hypocaust, although the Roman invention had no 
 special pipe for the smoke. The first furnaces sent 
 out only hot air, but in recent years steam or hot 
 water is sent out through the pipes to radiators, 
 25
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 which are simply secondary stoves set up in con- 
 venient places and at a distance from the source of 
 
 FIG. 9. A MODERN FURXACE. 
 
 the heat, the furnace in the cellar. Furnaces were 
 invented for the purpose of heating large buildings, 
 but they are now used in ordinary dwellings. 
 26
 
 THE STOVE 
 
 In its last and most highly developed form, the 
 stove appears not only without dust and smoke, but 
 also without even a fire in the cellar. The modern 
 electric stove, of course, is meant. Pass a slight 
 current of electricity through a piece of platinum 
 wire, and the platinum becomes hot. You have 
 made a diminutive electric stove. Increase the 
 strength of your current and pass it through some- 
 thing which offers greater resistance than the plati- 
 num, and you get more heat. The electric stove 
 is a new invention, and at present it is too expensive 
 for general use, although the number of houses in 
 which it is used is rapidly increasing, and in time 
 it may drive out all other kinds of stoves. It will 
 certainly drive all of them out if the cost of elec- 
 tricity shall be sufficiently reduced; for it is the clean- 
 est, the healthiest, the most convenient, and the most 
 easily controlled of stoves.
 
 THE LAMP 
 
 NEXT to its usefulness for heating and cook- 
 ing, the greatest use of fire is to furnish light 
 to drive away darkness. Man is not content, like 
 birds and brutes, to go to sleep at the setting of the 
 sun. He takes a part of the night-time and uses it 
 for work or for travel or for social pleasures, or for 
 the improvement of his mind, and in this way adds 
 several years to life. He could not do this if he 
 were compelled to grope in darkness. When the 
 great source of daylight disappears he must make 
 light for himself, for the sources of night-light 
 the moon and stars and aurora borealis and light- 
 ning are not sufficient to satisfy his wants. In this 
 chapter we shall follow man in his efforts to con- 
 quer darkness, and we shall have the story of the 
 lamp. 
 
 We may begin the story with an odd but interest- 
 ing kind of lamp. The firefly or lightning-bug 
 which we see so often in the summer nights was in 
 the earliest time brought into service and made to 
 shed its light for man. Fireflies were imprisoned 
 in a rude box in the shell of a cocoanut, perhaps, 
 or in a gourd and the light of their bodies was 
 allowed to shoot out through the numerous holes 
 28
 
 THE LAMP 
 
 FIG. I. A FIREFLY LAMP. 
 
 made in the box. We must not despise the light 
 given out by these tiny creatures. " In the moun- 
 tains of Tijuca," says a 
 traveler, " I have read the 
 finest print by the light of 
 one of these natural lamps 
 (fireflies) placed under a 
 common glass tumbler 
 (Fig. i), and with distinct- 
 ness I could tell the hour of 
 the night and discern the 
 very small figures which 
 marked the seconds of a little Swiss watch." 
 
 Although fireflies have been used here and there 
 by primitive folk, they could 
 hardly have been the first 
 lamp. Man's battle with 
 darkness really began with 
 the torch, which was lighted 
 at the fire in the cave or in the 
 wigwam and kept burning for 
 purposes of illumination. A 
 burning stick was the first 
 lamp (Fig. 2). The first 
 improvement in the torch 
 was made when slivers or 
 splinters of resinous or oily 
 wood were tied together and 
 burned. We may regard 
 this as a lamp which is all 
 29 
 
 FIG. 2. A BURNING STICK 
 WAS THE FIRST LAMP.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 wick. This invention resulted in a fuller and 
 clearer light, and one that would burn longer than 
 the single stick. A further improvement came when 
 a long piece of wax or fatty substance was wrapped 
 about with leaves. This was something like a 
 candle, only the wick (the leaves) was outside, and 
 the oily substance which fed the wick was in the 
 center. 
 
 In the course of time it was discovered that it was 
 better to smear the grease on the outside of the 
 stick, or on the outside of whatever was to be burned; 
 that is, that it was better to have the wick inside. 
 Torches were then made of rope coated with resin 
 or fat, or of sticks or splinters smeared with grease; 
 here the stick resembled the wick of the candle as 
 we know it to-day, and the coating of fat cor- 
 responded to the tallow or paraffin. Rude candles 
 made of oiled rope or of sticks smeared with fat were 
 invented in primitive times, and they continued to 
 be used for thousands of years after men were civ- 
 ilized. In the dark ages and they were dark in 
 more senses than one torch-makers began to wrap 
 the central stick first with flax or hemp and then 
 place around this a thick layer of fat. This torch 
 gave a very good light, but about the time of Alfred 
 the Great (900 A.D.) another step was taken: the 
 central stick was left out altogether, and the thick 
 layer of fat or wax was placed directly around the 
 wick of twisted cotton. All that was left of the 
 original torch the stick of wood was gone. 
 30
 
 THE LAMP 
 
 The torch had developed into the candle (Fig. 3). 
 
 The candles of to-day are made of better material 
 
 than those of the olden time, and they 
 
 are much cheaper; yet in principle 
 
 they do not differ from the candles of a 
 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 I have given the development of the 
 
 candle first because its forerunner, the 
 
 torch, was first used for lighting. But 
 
 it must not be forgotten that along 
 
 with the torch there was used, almost 
 
 from the beginning, another kind of 
 
 lamp. Almost as soon as men dis- 
 covered that the melted fat of animals 
 
 would burn easily and that w^s cer- 
 tainly very long ago they invented 
 
 in a rude form the lamp from which 
 
 the lamp of to-day has been evolved. 
 
 The cavity of a shell (Fig. 4) or of a stone, or of the 
 
 skull of an animal, was filled with melted fat or oil, 
 and a wick of flax or other 
 fibrous material was laid 
 upon the edge of the ves- 
 sel. The oil or grease 
 passed up the wick by 
 capillary action, 1 and 
 
 when the end of the wick was lighted it continued to 
 
 burn as long as there were both oil and wick. This 
 
 1 Hold the end of a dry towel in a basin of water and watch 
 the water rise in the towel. It rises by capillary action. 
 
 31 
 
 FIG. 3. THE 
 CANDLE. 
 
 FIG. 4. A SHELL FILLED WITH 
 OIL AND USED AS A LAMP.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 was the earliest lamp. As man became more civil- 
 ized, instead of a hollow stone or a skull, an earthen 
 saucer or bowl was used. Around the edge of the 
 bowl a gutter or spout was made for holding the 
 wick. In the lamp of the ancient Greeks and 
 
 FIG. 5. AN ETRUSCAN LAMP 25OO YEARS OLD. 
 
 Romans the reservoir which held the oil was closed, 
 although in the center there was a hole through 
 which the oil might be poured. Sometimes one of 
 these lamps would have several spouts or nozzles. 
 The more wicks a lamp had, of course, the more 
 32
 
 THE LAMP 
 
 light it would give. There is in the museum at Cor- 
 tona, in Italy, an ancient lamp which has sixteen 
 nozzles. This interesting relic (Fig. 5) was used 
 in a pagan temple in Etruria more than twenty-five 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 Lamps such as have just been described were used 
 among the civilized peoples of the ancient world, 
 and continued to be used through the Middle Ages 
 far into modern times. 
 They were sometimes very 
 costly and beautiful (Fig. 
 6), but they never gave a 
 good light. They sent out 
 an unpleasant odor, and 
 they were so smoky that 
 they covered the walls and 
 furniture with soot. The 
 candle was in every way 
 better than the ancient 
 lamp, and after the inven- 
 tion of wax tapers can- 
 dles made of wax in the 
 thirteenth century, lamps were no longer used 
 by those who could afford to buy tapers. For 
 ordinary purposes and ordinary people, however, the 
 lamp continued to do service, but it was not Im- 
 proved. The eighteenth century had nearly passed, 
 and the lamp was still the unsatisfactory, disagree- 
 able thing it had always been. 
 
 Late in the eighteenth century the improvement 
 33 
 
 FIG. 6. AN ANCIENT LAMP.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 came. In 1783 a man named Argand, a Swiss 
 physician residing in London, invented a lamp that 
 was far better than any that had ever been made be- 
 fore. What did Argand do for the lamp? Ex- 
 amine an ordinary lamp in which coal-oil is burned. 
 The chimney protects the 
 flame from sudden gusts 
 of wind and also creates a 
 draft of air, 1 just as the fire- 
 chimney creates a draft. 
 Argand's lamp (Fig. 7) was 
 the first to have a chimney. 
 Look below the chimney and 
 you will see open passages 
 through which air may pass 
 upward and find its way to 
 the wick. Notice further 
 that as this draft of air 
 passes upward it is so di- 
 rected that, when the lamp 
 is burning, an extra quantity 
 
 FIG. 7. AN ARGAND LAMP. ...... , , 
 
 of air plays directly upon the 
 
 wick. Before Argand, the wick received no 
 supply of air. Now notice and this is very im- 
 portant that the wick of our modern lamp is 
 flat or circular, but thin. The air in abundance 
 
 1 Light a short piece of candle and place it in a tumbler, and 
 cover the top of the tumbler. The experiment teaches that a 
 flame must have a constant supply of fresh air and will go out 
 if the air is shut off.ri 
 
 34
 
 THE LAMP 
 
 plays upon both sides of the thin wick, and burns it 
 without making smoke. Smoke is simply half- 
 burned particles (soot) of a burning substance. 
 The particles pass off half-burned because enough 
 air has not been supplied. Now Argand, by mak- 
 ing the wick thin and by causing plenty of air to 
 rush into the flame, caused all the wick to be burned 
 and thereby caused it to burn with a white flame. 
 
 After the invention of Argand, the art of lamp- 
 making improved by leaps and by bounds. More 
 progress was made in twenty years after 1783 than 
 had been made in twenty centuries before. New 
 burners were invented, new and better oils were 
 used, and better wicks made. But all the new kinds 
 of lamps were patterned after the Argand. The 
 lamp you use at home may not be a real Argand, but 
 it is doubtless made according to the principles of the 
 lamp invented by the Swiss physician in 1783. 
 
 Soon after Argand invented his lamp, William 
 Murdock, a Scottish inventor, showed the world a 
 new way of lighting a house. It had long been 
 known that fat or coal, when heated, gives off a 
 vapor or gas which burns with a bright light. In- 
 deed, it is always a gas that burns, and not a hard 
 substance. In the candle or in the lamp the flame 
 heats the oil which comes up to it through the wick 
 and thus causes the oil to give off a gas. It is this 
 gas that burns and gives the light. Now Murdock, 
 in 1797, put this principle to a good use. He heated 
 coal in a large vessel, and allowed the gas which 
 35
 
 FIR. 8. THE GAS JET 
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 was driven off to pass through mains and tubes to 
 different parts of his house. Wherever he wanted 
 a light he let the gas es- 
 cape at the end of the 
 tube (Fig. 8) in a small 
 jet and lighted it. Here 
 was a lamp without a wick. 
 Murdock soon extended 
 his gas-pipes to his fac- 
 tories, and lighted them 
 with gas. As soon as it 
 was learned how to make gas cheaply, and conduct it 
 safely from house to house, whole cities were rescued 
 from darkness by the new illuminant. A considerable 
 part of London was lighted by gas in 1815. Balti- 
 more was the first city in the United 
 States to be lighted by gas. This was 
 in 1821. 
 
 The gas-light proved to be so much 
 better than even the best of lamps, 
 that in towns and cities almost every- 
 body who could afford to do so laid 
 aside the old wick-lamp and burned 
 gas. About 1876, however, a new ; 
 kind of light began to appear. This -' 
 was the electric light. The powerful '' 
 arc light (Fig. 9), made by the pas- FIG. 9- AN EARLY 
 sage of a current of electricity be- 
 tween two carbon points, was the first to be in- 
 vented. This gave as much light as a hundred 
 36
 
 THE LAMP 
 
 gas-jets or several hundred lamps. Such a light 
 was excellent for lighting streets, but its painful 
 glare and its sputtering rendered it unfit for use 
 within doors. It was not long, however, before an 
 electric light was invented which could be used any- 
 where. This was the famous Edison's incandescent 
 or glow lamp (Fig. 10) , which we see on every hand. 
 Edison's invention is only a few years old, yet there 
 are already more than thirty million incandescent 
 lamps in use in the United States alone. 
 
 FIG. IO. AN INCANDESCENT ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 The torch, the candle, the lamp, the gas-light, the 
 electric light, these are the steps of the develop- 
 ment of the lamp. And how marvelous a growth 
 it is! How great the triumph over darkness! In 
 the beginning a piece of wood burns with a dull 
 flame, and fills the dingy wigwam or cave with soot 
 and smoke; now, at the pressure of a button, the 
 house is filled with a light that rivals the light of 
 day, with not a particle of smoke or soot or harm- 
 ful gas. Are there to be further triumphs in the 
 art of lighting? Are we to have a light that shall 
 drive out the electric light ? Only time can tell. 
 
 37
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 AFTER men had learned how to use fire for 
 cooking and heating and lighting they slowly 
 learned how to use it when working with metals. 
 In the earliest times metals were not used. For 
 long ages stone was the only material that man 
 could fashion and shape to his use. During this 
 period, sometimes called the " stone age," weapons 
 were made of stone; dishes and cooking utensils were 
 made of stone; and even the poor, rude tools of the 
 age were made of stone (Fig. i). 
 
 In the course of time man learned how to make 
 his implements and weapons of metals as well as of 
 stone. It is generally thought that bronze was the 
 first metal to be used and that the " stone age " was 
 followed directly by the " bronze age," a period 
 when all utensils, weapons, and tools were made 
 of bronze (Fig. 2) . It is easy to believe that bronze 
 was used before iron, for bronze is made of a mix- 
 ture of tin and copper and these two metals are 
 often found in their pure or natural state. When- 
 ever primitive man, therefore, found pieces of pure 
 copper and tin, he could take the two metals and by 
 melting them could easily mix them and make bronze 
 of them. This bronze he could fashion to his use. 
 38
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 FIG. I. IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE. 
 
 39
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 FIG. 2. IMPLEMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE. 
 40
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 There is no doubt that he did this at a very early 
 age. In nearly all parts of the world there are 
 proofs that in primitive times, many articles were 
 made of bronze. 
 
 If primitive man were slow to learn the use of iron 
 it was not because this metal was scarce, for iron 
 is everywhere. " Wherever, as we go up and down, 
 we see a red-colored surface, or a reddish tint upon 
 the solid substances of the earth, we see iron the 
 bank of red clay, the red brick, the red paint upon 
 the house wall, the complexion of rosy youth, or my 
 lady's ribbon. Even the rosy apple derives its tint 
 from iron which it contains." 1 But although iron 
 is so abundant it is seldom found in its pure or 
 natural state. It is nearly always mixed with other 
 substances, the mixture being known as iron ore. 
 Primitive man could find copper and tin in their pure 
 state but the only pure iron he could find was the 
 little which fell from heaven in the form of meteors, 
 and even this was not perfectly pure for meteoric 
 iron is also mixed slightly with other metals. 
 
 The iron which lay about primitive man in such 
 abundance was buried and locked tightly in an ore. 
 To separate the iron from the other substances 
 of the ore was by no means an easy thing to do. 
 Iron can best be extracted from the ore by putting 
 the ore in a fire and melting out the iron. Place 
 some iron ore in a fire and if the fire is hot enough 
 and it must be very hot indeed the iron will 
 
 1 J. R. Smith, " The Story of Iron and Steel," p. 3. 
 41
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 leave the ore and will gather into a lump at the 
 bottom of the fire. To separate the iron from its 
 ore in this way is to make iron. When and where 
 man first learned the secret of making iron is of 
 
 FIG. 3. THE PRIMITIVE FORGE. 
 
 course unknown. A camp-fire in some part of the 
 world may have shown to man the first lump of iron, 
 or a forest fire sweeping along and melting ores in 
 its path may have given the first hint for the manu- 
 facture of iron. 
 
 Iron making at first doubtless consisted in simply 
 melting the ore in an open heap of burning wood or 
 charcoal, for charcoal is an excellent fuel for smelt- 
 42
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 ing (melting) ores. But this open-fire method was 
 wasteful and tedious and at a very early date the 
 smelting of the ore was done in a rude sort of a fur- 
 nace. A hole ten or twelve feet deep was dug in 
 the side of a hill. In the hole were placed char- 
 coal and iron ore, first a layer of charcoal, then a 
 layer of the ore. At the top of the mass there was 
 an opening and at the bottom there were several 
 openings. When the mass was set on fire the open- 
 ings produced a good strong draft, the charcoal was 
 consumed, and the ore was smelted. The product 
 was a lump of wrought iron, known as the bloom. 
 
 The hillside furnace* worked well enough when 
 the wind was favorable, but when the wind was un- 
 favorable there was no draft and no iron could 
 be made. So ironmakers found a way by which 
 the air could be driven into the furnace by artificial 
 means. They invented the bellows, a blowing ap- 
 paratus (Fig. 3) which was usually made of goat 
 skins sewed together and which was operated either 
 by the hands or by the feet (Fig. 4) . Sometimes the 
 bellows consisted of a hollow log in which a piston 
 was worked up and down (Fig. 5). After the in- 
 vention of the bel- 
 1 o w s, ironmakers 
 could make their 
 iron whenever and 
 wherever they 
 pleased, for they 
 
 FIG. 4 .- BELLOWS WORKED BY THE FEET. COuld f rCC >tO 
 43
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 their furnaces at any time and at any place. This 
 rude bellows forcing a draft of air into a half- 
 closed furnace filled with a burning mass of charcoal 
 and iron ore was the first form of the forge, one of 
 the greatest of all inventions. 
 
 With the invention of the forge the stone age 
 gradually passed away and the iron age was ushered 
 
 FIG. 5. THE WOODEN BELLOWS. 
 
 in. Tools and weapons could now be made of iron. 
 And great was the difference between iron tools and 
 stone tools. To cut down a tree with a flint hatchet 
 required the labor of a man for a month, while to 
 clear a forest with such an implement was an im- 
 possible task. But the forge gave to man iron for 
 the sharp cutting tools, for the ax and knife and 
 chisel and saw. With these he became the master of 
 wood and he could now easily cut down trees and 
 44
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 build houses and make furniture and wagons and 
 boats. 
 
 As time went on and man advanced in civilization, 
 iron was found to be the most useful of metals. 
 Iron can be shaped into many forms. It can be 
 drawn into wire of any desired length or fineness, it 
 may be bent in any direction, it may be sharpened, 
 or hardened, or softened, at pleasure. " Iron ac- 
 commodates itself to all our wants and desires and 
 even to our caprices. It is equally serviceable to the 
 arts, the sciences, to agriculture and war; the same 
 ore furnishes the sword, the plowshare, the scythe, 
 the pruning-hook, the needle, the spring of a watch 
 or of a carriage, the chisel, the chain, the anchor, 
 the compass and the bomb. It is a medicine of much 
 virtue and the only metal friendly to the human 
 frame." l 
 
 A metal that was so useful was needed in large 
 quantities, yet the primitive forge could turn out 
 only small quantities of iron. A day's labor at the 
 bellows would produce a lump weighing only fifteen 
 or twenty pounds. As a result of this slowness in 
 manufacture there was always in primitive and 
 ancient times a scarcity of iron. Indeed in some 
 countries iron was a precious metal, almost as 
 precious as silver or gold. In many countries, it is 
 true, there were thousands of forges at work, but 
 in no country was the supply of iron equal to the de- 
 mand. The old forge could not supply the demand, 
 
 1 From "Five Black Arts," p. 311. 
 
 45
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 yet centuries passed before any great improvement 
 was made in the progress of iron making. 
 
 Near the close of the Middle Ages improvements 
 
 upon the prim- 
 itive forge be- 
 gan to be made. 
 In the sixteenth 
 century iron- 
 makers in Ger- 
 many began to 
 smdt ore in 
 closed furnaces 
 and to build 
 their furnaces 
 higher and to 
 make them 
 larger (Fig. 6). 
 Sometimes they 
 built their fur- 
 naces to a height 
 of t w e n t y or 
 thirty feet. 
 About this time 
 also a better 
 and a stronger 
 blast was invent- 
 
 FIG. 6. A BLAST FURNACE OF THE MIDDLE 
 1 AGES. 
 
 ed. Water- 
 power instead of hand-power began to be used for 
 operating the bellows. In some cases wooden bel- 
 lows great wooden pistons working in tubs 
 
 46
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 were substituted for the old bellows of leather. By 
 the end of the sixteenth century so many improve- 
 ments had been made upon the primitive forge that 
 it no longer resembled the forge of ancient times. 
 So the new forge received a new name and was called 
 a blast furnace. 1 You should observe, however, 
 that the blast furnace was simply the old forge built 
 with a large closed furnace and provided with a 
 more powerful blast. 
 
 The invention of the blast furnace marked the 
 beginning of a new era in the history of iron mak- 
 ing. In the first place there was produced in the 
 blast furnace a kind of iron that was entirely dif- 
 ferent from. that which was produced in the primi- 
 tive forge. In the primitive forge there was made 
 a lump of practically pure unmelted iron, known as 
 wrought iron. In the blast furnace there was pro- 
 duced a somewhat impure grade of melted iron, 
 known as cast iron, or pig ~ iron. In the second 
 place, the blast furnace produced iron in quantities 
 vastly greater than it was ever produced by the old 
 
 1 The old forge continued to be used by the side of the blast 
 furnace for centuries, and of course where it was used it was 
 still called a forge. Thus we are told that in Maryland in 1761, 
 there were eight furnaces and ten forges. It is said that as 
 late as twenty-five years ago in certain parts of the Appalachian 
 regions the American mountaineer still worked the little primitive 
 forge to make his iron. 
 
 2 It was given the name of pig iron because when the molten 
 metal ran into the impressions made for it upon the sanded 
 floor and cooled, it assumed a shape resembling a family of 
 little pigs. 
 
 47
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 forge. In the blast furnace more iron could be made 
 in a day than could be made by the forge in a month. 
 In some of the early blast furnaces a thousand 
 pounds of iron could be made at one melting and we 
 read of one early furnace that produced 150 tons of 
 iron in a year. 
 
 But even with the blast furnace it was still diffi- 
 cult to make enough iron to supply the ever-increas- 
 
 , ' 
 
 FIG. 7. MAKING CHARCOAL. 
 
 ing demands of the industrial world. In the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries machinery was 
 brought into use more than ever before and of course 
 more iron was needed for the construction of the 
 machines. There was ore enough for all the iron 
 that was needed but it was difficult to get fuel enough 
 to smelt the ore. Charcoal was still used as the 
 fuel for smelting (Fig. 7), and in order to get wood 
 48
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 for the charcoal great inroads were made upon the 
 forests. In England in the early part of the eight- 
 eenth century Parliament had to put a check upon 
 the manufacture of iron in certain counties in order 
 to save the forests of those counties from utter 
 destruction. It then became plain that if iron mak- 
 ing were to be continued on a large scale a new kind 
 of fuel would have to be used in the furnaces. So 
 men set their wits to work to find a new kind of fuel. 
 As far back as 1619 Dud Dudley in the county of 
 Warwick, England, undertook to use ordinary soft 
 coal in his furnaces but his experiment was not very 
 successful or very profitable. More than a century 
 after this an English ironmaker named Abraham 
 Darby began (in 1735) to use charred coal in his 
 blast furnaces, and his experiments were successful. 
 Here was the new fuel which was so badly needed. 
 Charred coal is simply coke and coke could be had 
 in abundance. So the new fuel was soon used in 
 all parts of England and by the end of the eighteenth 
 century coke was driving charcoal out of blast fur- 
 naces ( Fig. 8 ) . 
 
 About the time the use of coke for smelting be- 
 came general, an Englishman named Neilson brought 
 about another great change in the process of iron 
 making. Before Neilson's time the blast driven into 
 the furnace had always been one of cold air. Neil- 
 son learned that if the air before entering the furnace 
 were heated to a temperature of 600 degrees it would 
 melt twice the amount of ore and thus produce twice 
 49
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 the amount of iron without any increase in the amount 
 of fuel. So he invented (in 1828) a lwi blast for 
 the blast furnace (Fig. 9). With the use of coke 
 and with the hot blast the production of iron increased 
 enormously. But there was need for all the iron that 
 could be made. Indeed it seems that the world can 
 never get too much iron. About the time the hot 
 blast was invented iron chains instead of ropes be- 
 
 FIG. 8. A PITTSBURGH COKE OVEN. 
 
 gan to be used for holding anchors, iron plows 
 began to be made in great numbers (p. 83), iron 
 pipes instead of hollow wooden logs began to be used 
 as water-mains in cities, and iron rails began to be 
 used on railroads. To supply iron for all these 
 purposes kept ironmakers busy enough, even though 
 they burned coke in their furnaces and made use of 
 the hot air blast. 
 
 But ironmakers were soon to become busier than 
 50
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 ever before. About the middle of the nineteenth 
 century Sir Henry Bessemer invented a new process 
 of making steel. Steel is only iron mixed with a 
 small amount of carbon. Ironmakers have known 
 
 A MODERN III.AST Fl'KN.UK. 
 
 how to make steel and good steel, too for thou- 
 sands of years, but before the days of Bessemer the 
 process had always been slow and tedious, and the 
 cost of steel had always been very great. Bessemer
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 u. 
 
 From copyright stereograph by Underwood & I'n 
 FIG. 10. GREAT STEEL RAIL PASSING THROUGH ROLLER STEEL MILL.
 
 THE FORGE 
 
 undertook to make steel in large quantities and at 
 low prices. In his experiments amid showers of 
 molten metal he often risked his life, but his perse- 
 verance and courage were rewarded. By 1858 he 
 had invented a process by which tons of molten iron 
 could be run into a furnace and in a few minutes be 
 converted into a fine quality of steel. This invention 
 of Bessemer was the last great step in the history of 
 the forge. 
 
 Now that steel could be made in great quantities 
 and at a low cost it was put to uses never dreamed 
 of in former times. Soon the railroad rail was made 
 of steel (Fig. 10), bridges were made of steel, ships 
 of war were plated with steel. Then ocean gray- 
 hounds and battleships were made of steel, still later 
 steel freight cars and steel passenger coaches were in- 
 troduced, while in our own time we see vast quanti- 
 ties of steel used in the building of houses. So while 
 the invention of Bessemer marked the last step in the 
 history of the forge it also marked the ending of the 
 Age of Iron and the beginning of the wonderful age 
 in which we live the Age of Steel. 
 
 53
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 WE have now traced the steps by which man 
 mastered the art of kindling^ a fire quickly 
 and easily and have followed the progress that has 
 been made in the most common uses of fire. But 
 the story of a most important use of fire remains 
 to be told, the story of its use in doing man's work. 
 How important this use is, how much of the world's 
 work is done through the agency of fire, a little 
 reflection will make plain. Fire makes steam and 
 what does steam do? Its services are so many you 
 could hardly name all of them. The great and many 
 services of steam are made possible by the fire-engine, 
 or steam-engine, and the story of this wonderful 
 invention will now be told. 
 
 That steam has the power to move things must 
 have been learned almost as soon as fire was used 
 to boil water. Heat water until it boils and the 
 steam that is formed is bound to move something 
 unless it is allowed to escape freely. It will burst 
 the vessel if an outlet is not provided. That is why 
 a spout has been placed on the tea-kettle. Where 
 there is cooking, steam is abundant and the first ex- 
 periments in steam were doubtless made in the kitchen 
 54
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 (Fig. i). It has been said that the idea of the 
 steam-engine first occurred to Adam as he watched 
 his wife's kettle boil. 
 
 Whatever may have happened in ancient kitchens, 
 we are certain that there were no steam-engines 
 until many centuries after Adam. The beginnings 
 of this invention are not shrouded in so much mystery 
 as are those of the match and the lamp and the 
 forge. In giving an 
 account of the steam- 
 engine we can men- 
 tion names and give 
 dates from the very 
 beginning of the 
 story. We know 
 what the first steam- 
 engine was like and 
 we know who made 
 it and when and 
 where it was made. 
 It was made 120 B. 
 C. by Hero, a philosopher of Alexandria in Egypt. 
 It was like the one shown in Figure 2. The boy 
 applies the fire to the steam-tight vessel p and when 
 steam is formed it passes up through the tube o and 
 enters the globe which turns easily on the pivots. 
 The steam, when it has filled the globe, rushes out of 
 the short tubes w and z projecting from opposite 
 sides of the globe and bent at the end in opposite 
 directions. As it rushes out of the tubes the steam 
 55 
 
 FIG. I. FIRST EXPERIMENTS WITH 
 STEAM.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 strikes against the air and the reaction causes the 
 globe to revolve, just as in yards we sometimes see 
 
 FIG. 2. HERO S ENGINE, I2O B. C. 
 
 jets of water causing bent tubes to revolve. This 
 was Hero's engine, the first steam-engine ever made. 
 Hero's engine was used only as a toy and it seems 
 56
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 to represent all the ancients knew about the power of 
 steam and all they did with it. It is not strange that 
 they did not know more for there is no general rule 
 by which discoveries are made. Sometimes even 
 enlightened peoples have for centuries remained blind 
 to the simplest principles of nature. The Greeks and 
 Romans with all their culture and wisdom were igno- 
 rant of some of the plainest facts of science. It 
 is a little strange, however, that after Hero's dis- 
 covery was made known, men did not profit by it. 
 It would seem that eager and persistent attempts 
 would have been made at once to have steam do use- 
 ful work, as well as furnish amusement. But such 
 was not the case. Hero's countrymen paid but little 
 attention to his invention and the steam-engine passed 
 almost completely out of men's minds and did not 
 again attract attention for nearly seventeen hundred 
 years. 
 
 About the end of the fifteenth century Europe 
 began to awaken from a long slumber and by the end 
 of the sixteenth century its eyes were wide open. 
 Everywhere men were now trying to learn all they 
 could. The study of steam was taken up in earnest 
 about the middle of the sixteenth century and by the 
 middle of the next century quite a little had been 
 learned of its nature and power. In 1629 an Italian, 
 Branca by name, described in a book a steam-engine 
 which would furnish power for pounding drugs in 
 a mortar. There was no more need for such a 
 machine then than there is now and of course the 
 57
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 inventor aroused no interest in his engine. You 
 can easily understand how Branca's engine (Fig. 
 3) works. The steam causes the wheels and the 
 cylinder to revolve. As the cylinder revolves, a 
 cleat on it catches a cleat on the pestle and lifts the 
 pestle a short distance and then lets it fall. Here 
 the pestle instead of being raised by a human hand 
 is raised by the force of steam. This engine would 
 
 FIG. 3. BRANCA'S ENGINE, 1629. 
 
 be more interesting if an engine had actually been 
 made, but there is no reason to believe that Branca 
 ever made the engine he described. We owe much 
 to him, nevertheless, for suggesting how steam might 
 be put to doing useful work. 
 
 It was not very long before an Englishman put 
 into practice what the Italian had only suggested. 
 Edward Somerset, the Second Marquis of Wor- 
 cester, in 1663 built a steam-engine that raised to 
 58
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 the height of forty feet four large buckets of water 
 in four minutes of time. This was the first useful 
 work ever done by steam. Figure 4 shows the con- 
 struction of Worcester's engine. 
 
 In this engine there was one improvement over 
 former engines which | 
 was of the greatest | 
 importance : there ! 
 was one vessel in 
 which the steam was 
 generated and an- 
 other in which the 
 steam did its work. 
 The steam-engine 
 now consisted of two 
 great divisions, the 
 boiler and the engine 
 proper. 
 
 Worcester spent a 
 large part of his 
 fortune in trying to 
 improve the steam- 
 engine, yet he re- 
 ceived neither profit 
 nor honor as a re- na 4- WORCESTER'S ENGINE, 1663. 
 
 ward. He died poor and his name was soon forgot- 
 ten. His service to the world was nevertheless very 
 great. In his time the mines of England had been 
 sunk very deep into the earth; and the deeper they 
 were sunk the greater was the difficulty of lifting the 
 59
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 water out of them and keeping them dry. The 
 water was lifted up from the mines by means of 
 buckets drawn by horses or oxen (Fig. 5). Some- 
 times it took several hundred horses to keep the water 
 out of a single mine. It was Worcester's object to 
 construct an engine that would do the work of the 
 horses. The engine he built could not do this, yet it 
 furnished the idea and the idea is often the most 
 
 FIG. 5- AN ANCIENT METHOD OF DRAWING WATER. 
 
 important thing. It was not long before engines 
 built upon Worcester's plan were doing useful work 
 at the mines. At the opening of the eighteenth 
 century the steam-engine had been put to work and 
 was serving man in England and throughout the con- 
 tinent of Europe. 
 
 The first engines were not safe. Often the steam 
 pressed too heavily upon the sides of the vessel in 
 which it was compressed and there were explosions. 
 60
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 About 1680 Denis Papin, a Frenchman, invented the 
 safely valve, that is a valve that opens of its own 
 accord and lets out steam when there is more in the 
 vessel than ought to be there. About ten years later 
 Papin gave the world another most valuable idea. 
 In Worcester's engine the steam in the steam chest 
 pressed directly on the water that was to be forced 
 up. Papin showed a better way. He invented the 
 engine shown in Figure 6. In 
 this engine a small quantity of 
 water was placed in the bottom 
 of the cylinder A. Fitting 
 closely in the cylinder was a pis- 
 ton B such as Papin had seen 
 used in ordinary pumps. We 
 will suppose that the piston is 
 near the bottom of the cylinder 
 and that a fire is built under- 
 neath. The bottom being 
 made of very thin metal the 
 water is rapidly converted into steam and thus drives 
 the piston up 'to the top as shown in the figure. 
 Here a latch E catches the piston-rod H and holds 
 the piston up until it is time for it to descend. Now 
 the fire is removed and the steam, becoming cold, is 
 condensed and a vacuum is formed below the piston. 
 The latch E now releases the rod H and the piston 
 is driven down by the air above it, pulling with it 
 the rope L which passes over the pulleys TT. As 
 the rope descends it lifts a weight W or does other 
 61 
 
 FIG. 6. PAPIN'S EN- 
 GINE, 1690.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 useful work. As the inventor of the piston Papin 
 ranks among the greatest of those whose names are 
 connected with the development of the steam-engine. 
 Our story has now brought us to the early part 
 of the eighteenth century. Everywhere men were 
 now trying to make the most of the ideas of Wor- 
 cester and Papin. The mines were growing very 
 deep. As the water in them was getting beyond 
 control something extraordinary had to be done. 
 Now it seems that whenever the world is in need of an 
 extraordinary service someone is found to render 
 that service. The man who built the engine that 
 was needed was a humble blacksmith of Dart- 
 mouth, England, Thomas Newcomen. This master 
 mechanic in 1705 constructed the best steam-engine 
 the world had yet seen. We must study Newcomen's 
 engine (Fig. 7) very carefully. The large beam 
 ii moved freely up and down on the pivot "c. One 
 end of the beam was connected with the heavy pump- 
 rod k by means of a rope or chain working in a 
 groove and the other end was connected with the 
 rod r in the same way. When steam from the boiler 
 b passed through the valve d into the cylinder (steam- 
 chest) a it raised the piston s and with it the piston- 
 rod r thus slackening the rope and allowing the op- 
 posite end of the beam to be pulled down by the 
 weight of the pump-rod k. As soon as the piston 
 s reached the top of the cylinder the steam was shut 
 off by means of the valve d and the valve / was turned 
 and a jet of cold water from the tank g was injected 
 62
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 FIG. 7. NEWCOMEN S ENGINE, 1705. 
 63
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 into the cylinder a with the steam. The jet of cold 
 water condensed the steam rapidly steam is 
 always condensed rapidly when anything cold comes 
 in contact with it and the water formed by the 
 condensation escaped through the pipe p into the tank 
 o. As soon as the steam in a is condensed, a vacuum 
 was formed in the cylinder and the atmosphere above 
 forced the piston down and at the same time pulled 
 the pump-rod k up and lifted water from the well or 
 mine. When the piston reached the bottom of 
 the cylinder the valve d was opened and the piston 
 again ascended. Thus the beam is made to go up 
 and down and the pumping goes on. Notice that 
 steam pushes the piston one way and the atmosphere 
 pushes it back. 
 
 In Newcomen's engine the valves (/ and d) at first 
 were opened and shut (at each stroke of the piston) 
 by an attendant, usually a boy. In 1713 a boy 
 named Humphrey Potter, in order to get some time 
 for play, by means of strings and latches, caused 
 the beam in its motion to open and shut the valves 
 without human aid. We must not despise Humphrey 
 because his purpose was to gain time for play. The 
 purpose of almost all inventions is to save human 
 labor so that men may have more time for amuse- 
 ment and rest. Humphrey Potter ought to be re- 
 membered not as a lazy boy but as a great in- 
 ventor. His strings and latches improved the engine 
 wonderfully (Fig. 8). Before his invention the 
 piston made only six or eight strokes a minute; after 
 64
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 the valves were made to open and shut by the motion 
 of the beam, it made fifteen or sixteen strokes a 
 minute and the engine did more than twice as much 
 work. 
 
 Newcomen's engine as improved by Potter and 
 others grew rapidly into favor. It was used most 
 
 FIG. 8. HUMPHREY POTTER'S LATCHES AND STRINGS. 
 
 commonly to pump water out of the mines but it 
 was put to other uses. In and about London it was 
 used to supply water to large houses and in 1752 
 a flour mill near Bristol was driven by a steam-engine. 
 In Holland Newcomen's engines were used to assist 
 the wind-mills in draining lakes. 
 65
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 66
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 For nearly seventy-five years engines were every- 
 where built after the Newcomen pattern. Improve- 
 ments in a small way were added now and then but 
 no very important change was made until the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century, when the steam-engine 
 was made by James Watt practically what it is to-day. 
 This great inventor spent years in making improve- 
 ments upon Newcomen's engine (Fig. 9) and when 
 his labors were finished he had done more for the 
 steam-engine than any man who ever lived. We must 
 try to learn what he did. We can learn what Watt 
 did by studying Figure 10. Here P is a piston work- 
 ing in a cylinder A closed at both ends. By the 
 side of the cylinder is a valve-chest C into which 
 steam passes from the pipe T. Connecting C with 
 the cylinder there are two openings, one at the top 
 of the cylinder and the other at the bottom. The 
 valve-chest is provided with valves which are worked 
 by means of the rod F, which moves up and down 
 with the beam B, thanks to Humphrey Potter for the 
 hint. The valves are so arranged that when steam 
 enters the opening at the top of the cylinder it is 
 shut off from the opening at the bottom, and when 
 it enters the opening at the bottom it is shut off 
 from the opening at the top. When the opening 
 at the bottom is closed the steam will rush in at the 
 upper opening and push the piston downward; when 
 the piston has nearly reached the bottom of the cylin- 
 der the upper opening will be closed and steam will 
 rush in at the bottom of the steam chest and push 
 67
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 the piston upwards. Here was one of the things 
 done by Watt for the engine: he contrived to make 
 the steam push the piston down as well as up. You 
 
 FIG. 10. WATT S ENGINE. 
 
 have observed that in Newcomen's engine steam was 
 
 used only to push the piston tip, the atmosphere being 
 
 relied upon to push it down. Thus we may say that 
 
 68
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 Watt's engine was the first real steam-engine, for it 
 was the first that was worked entirely by steam. All 
 engines before it had been worked partly by steam 
 and partly by air. 
 
 Watt's greatest improvement upon the steam- 
 engine is yet to be mentioned. In Newcomen's 
 engine when the cold water was injected into the cyl- 
 inder it cooled the piston and when steam was let into 
 the cylinder again a part of it, striking the cold piston, 
 was condensed before it had time to do any work and 
 the power of this part of the steam was lost. Watt 
 did not allow the piston to get cold, for he did not 
 inject any cold water into the cylinder. In his engine 
 as soon as the steam did its work it was carried off 
 through the pipe M to the vessel N and there con- 
 densed by means of a jet of water which was injected 
 into N (called the condenser) by means of a pump 
 E worked by the motion of the beam, thanks again 
 to Humphrey Potter for the idea. This condensa- 
 tion of the steam outside of the cylinder and at a 
 distance from it prevented the piston (and cylinder) 
 from getting cold. In other words, in the Watt en- 
 gine when steam entered the cylinder it went straight 
 to work pushing the piston. No steam was lost and 
 no power was lost and the cost of running the en- 
 gine was greatly reduced. 
 
 It cannot be said that Watt invented the steam- 
 engine no one can claim that honor yet he did 
 so much to make it better that he well deserves the 
 epitaph which is inscribed on his monument in 
 69
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 Westminster Abbey. This inscription is as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 NOT TO PERPETUATE A NAME 
 WHICH MUST ENDURE WHILE THE PEACEFUL ARTS 
 
 FLOURISH 
 BUT TO SHEW 
 
 THAT MANKIND HAVE LEARNT TO HONOR THOSE 
 WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE 
 
 THE KING 
 
 HIS MINISTERS AND MANY OF THE NOBLES 
 
 AND COMMONERS OF THE REALM 
 
 RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO 
 
 JAMES WATT 
 
 WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL 
 
 GENIUS 
 
 EARLY EXERCISED IN PHILOSOPHIC RESEARCH 
 TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF 
 
 THE STEAM ENGINE 
 ENLARGED THE RESOURCES OF HIS COUNTRY 
 
 INCREASED THE POWER OF MAN 
 
 AND ROSE TO AN EMINENT PLACE 
 
 AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FOLLOWERS OF 
 
 SCIENCE 
 AND THE REAL BENEFACTORS OF THE WORLD 
 
 BORN AT GREENOCH MDCCXXXVI 
 DIED AT HEATHFIELD IN STAFFORDSHIRE 
 MDCCCXIX 
 
 But the story of the steam-engine does not end 
 with Watt. It will be remembered that in the en- 
 gines of Nero and of Branca the steam did its work 
 by reaction or by impulse. Now soon after the time 
 70
 
 THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 of Watt, inventors turned their thoughts to the old 
 engines of Nero and Branca and began to experiment 
 with engines that would do their work by a direct 
 impact of steam. After nearly a century of experi- 
 menting and after many failures there was at last 
 developed an engine known as the steam-turbine. 
 In this engine the steam does its work by impinging 
 or pushing directly upon blades (Fig. n) which 
 
 FIG. II. SHAFT OF A LARGE MARINE TURBINE. 
 
 Within the cylinder are thousands of blades upon which the 
 steam acts directly in the turning of the shaft. In the largest 
 turbines there are as many as 50,000 blades. 
 
 are connected with the shaft which is to be turned, 
 and it does this in much the same manner that we saw 
 the steam do its work in Branca's engine. One of 
 the greatest names connected with the steam turbine 
 is that of Charles Algernon Parsons of England. 
 In 1884 this great inventor patented a steam-turbine 
 which proved to be a commercial success and since 
 that date the steam-turbine has been constantly grow-
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 ing in favor. So great has been its 'success on land 
 and on sea that there are those who believe that the 
 engine invented by Watt will in time be cast aside 
 and that its place will be taken by an engine which 
 is the most ancient as well as the most modern of 
 steam motors. 
 
 72
 
 THE PLOW 
 
 YOU have now learned the history of those inven- 
 tions which enabled man to gain a mastery over 
 fire and to use it for his comfort and convenience. 
 We shall next learn the history of an invention 
 which gave man the mastery of the soil and enabled 
 him to take from the earth priceless treasures of 
 fruit and grain. This invention was the plow. 
 
 In his earliest state man had no use for the plow 
 because he did not look to the soil as a place from 
 which he was to get his food. The first men were 
 hunters and they relied upon the chase for their food. 
 They roamed from place to place in pursuit of 
 their prey the birds and beasts of the forest and the 
 fishes of the stream. They did not remain long 
 enough in one spot to sow seed and to reap the har- 
 vest. Still in their wanderings they found wheat 
 and barley growing wild and they ate of the seeds 
 of these plants and learned that the little grains were 
 good for food. They learned, too, that if the seeds 
 were planted in a soil that was well stirred the plants 
 would grow better than they would if the seeds were 
 planted in hard ground. So by the time men had 
 grown tired of wandering about and were ready to 
 settle down and live in one spot they had learned two 
 73
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 important facts: they knew they could add to their 
 food supply by tilling the soil, and they knew that 
 they could grow better crops if they would stir the 
 soil before planting the seed. 
 
 For the stirring of the soil the primitive farmer 
 doubtless first used a sharpened stick such as wander- 
 ing tribes carry for the purpose of digging up eatable 
 
 FIG. 1. THE KATTA OR DIGGING STICK. 
 
 roots, knocking fruits down from trees, and breaking 
 
 the heads of enemies. Such a stick known as the 
 
 Katta (Fig. i) is carried by certain tribes in Aus- 
 
 tralia, and we are told by travelers that the Kurubars 
 
 of Southern India use a sharp stick when digging up 
 
 the ground. The digging stick is used by savages in 
 
 many parts of the world 
 
 and we may regard it as 
 
 the oldest of implements 
 
 used for tilling the soil. 
 
 The first plow was a 
 forked stick or a limb of a 
 tree with a projecting point 
 
 PIG. 2.-THE FUST 
 
 plement the ground was 
 
 broken not by digging but by dragging the fork 
 or projecting point of the stick through the 
 ground and forming a continuous furrow. In this 
 
 74
 
 THE PLOW 
 
 forked stick we see two of the principal parts 
 of the modern plow. The fork of the stick is the 
 share, or cutting part of the plow, while the main part 
 of the stick is the beam. 
 
 An improvement upon the simple forked stick is 
 seen in Figure 3, which is copied from an ancient 
 monument in Syria (in Asia Minor) . The old Syrian 
 plow consists almost wholly of the natural crooks of 
 a branch of a tree, the only artificial piece being the 
 
 FIG. 3. THE SYRIAN PLOW KNOWN AS JOBS PLOW. 
 
 brace e which connects the share and the beam and 
 holds them firm. In this crooked stick we have 
 three of the main parts of the modern plow, the 
 beam (a), the share (c-b) and the handle *(d) . The 
 plow in this form requires the services of two persons 
 one to draw the plow and one to guide it and 
 keep it in the ground. It is said that it was with a 
 plow of this kind that the servants of Job were 
 plowing when they were driven from their fields by 
 the Sabeans. 
 
 The first plows were drawn by the strength of the 
 75
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 FIG. 4. PLOW DRAWN BY HU- 
 MAN LABOR. 
 
 human body (Fig. 4). Upon a very old monument 
 of ancient Egypt, the country which seems to have 
 been the first home of the plow, we have a plowing 
 scene which shows a num- 
 ber of men dragging a 
 plow by means of a rope. 
 But primitive man was not 
 at all fond of labor and in 
 the course of time he tamed 
 wild bulls and horses and 
 made them draw the plows. 
 So upon another Egyptian 
 monument of a later date we have a picture of a 
 plowing scene in which animals are drawing the plow 
 (Fig. 5). In this Egyptian plow we see improve- 
 ments upon the crooked stick of the Syrians. The 
 Egyptian plow, you observe, has a broader share. 
 It will, therefore, make a wider furrow and will plow 
 more ground. Moreover, it has two handles instead 
 of one. Taking it 
 altogether, the 
 Egyptian plow was 
 a fairly good imple- 
 ment. 
 
 Many centuries 
 passed before any 
 real improvement 
 was made upon the old Egyptian plow. If there 
 were any improvement anywhere it was among 
 the Romans. We read in Pliny a Roman writer 
 
 
 FIG. 5. THE EGYPTIAN 1'LOW. 

 
 THE PLOW 
 
 of the first century of a plow that had wheels to 
 
 regulate the depth of the plow and also a coulter, 
 
 that is, a knife 
 
 fixed in front of the 
 
 share to make the 
 
 first cut of the sod 
 
 (Fig. 6). But such 
 
 a plow was not in 
 
 general use in 
 
 Pliny's time. A 
 
 thousand years 
 
 FJG. 6. PLINY'S PLOW, 70 A. D. 
 
 later, however, the 
 plow with wheels 
 and coulter was doubtless in common use. In a pic- 
 ture taken from an old Saxon print we see (Fig. 7) a 
 plow which was used in the time of William the Con- 
 queror (1066). Here the plow has a coulter in- 
 serted in the beam and there are two wheels to regu- 
 
 FIG. 7. AN OLD SAXON PLOW, 
 
 late the depth to which the plow may go. This 
 Saxon plow is drawn by four fine oxen and it is 
 plainly a great improvement upon the old Egyptian 
 plow. 
 
 77
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 But improvements in the plow during the dark 
 ages came very slowly. At the time of the discovery 
 of America the plow was still the clumsy wooden 
 thing it was five hundred years before. In the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries, however, when im- 
 provements were being made in so many things, it 
 was natural that men should begin to think of try- 
 ing to improve the plow. In an old book published 
 in 1652 we read of a double plow one which 
 would plow two furrows at one time. A picture 
 
 FIG. 8. A DOUDLE PLOW OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 (This plow was proposed but was never made.) 
 
 (Fig. 8) of the double plow is given in the book but 
 there is no proof that such a plow was ever made or 
 ever used. The world did not as yet need a double 
 plow, although the time was to come when it would 
 need one. 
 
 In the early part of the eighteenth century we 
 begin to see real improvements in plow making. 
 About this time Dutch plowmakers began to put 
 mold-boards on their plows. The purpose of the 
 mold-board is to lift up and turn over the slice of 
 sod cut by the share. Without the mold-board the 
 plow simply runs through the ground and stirs if 
 
 78
 
 THE PLOW 
 
 up. With the mold-board of the Dutch plow (Fig. 
 9) the sod was turned completely over and the weejs 
 and grass were covered up. This was the kind of 
 plow that was needed, for if the weeds and grass 
 are not covered up the best effects of plowing are 
 lost. So the mold-board was a great improvement 
 and its invention marks a great event in the history 
 of the plow. 
 
 The Dutch plow was taken as a model for English 
 plows and, in fact, for the plows of all nations. The 
 
 FIG. Q. THE DUTCH PLOW SHOWING THE MOLD-BOAkD. 
 
 mold-board grew rapidly into favor and by the end 
 of the eighteenth century it was found on plows in 
 all civilized nations. But the plow was still made 
 mostly of wood (Fig. 10) and it was still an awk- 
 ward and a poorly constructed affair. The method 
 of making plows about the year 1800 has been 
 described as follows : " A mold-board was hewed 
 from a tree with the grain of the timber running 
 as nearly along its shape as it could well be obtained. 
 On to this mold-board, to prevent its wearing out 
 79
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 too rapidly, were nailed the blade of an old hoe, 
 thin strips of iron, or worn out horseshoes (Fig. 10). 
 The land side was of wood, its base and sides shod 
 with thin plates of iron. The share was of iron with 
 a hardened steel point. The coulter was 
 tolerably well made of iron. The beam was 
 usually a straight stick. The handles, like 
 the mold-board, were split from the crooked 
 
 trunk of a tree 
 or as often cut 
 from its 
 ^==r branches. The beam 
 was set at any pitch that 
 fancy might dictate, with 
 
 FIG. ia- A COLONIAL FU>W. 
 
 almost at right angles with it, thus leaving the plow- 
 man little control over his implement, which did its 
 work in, a very slow and most imperfect manner." 
 But about the end of the eighteenth century the 
 world was beginning to need a plow that would do 
 its work rapidly and well. Population was every- 
 where increasing and it was necessary to till more 
 ground than had ever been tilled in former times. 
 Especially was a good plow needed in the United 
 States where there were vast areas of new ground to 
 be broken. And it was in the United States that the 
 first great improvements in the plow were made. 
 Foremost among those who helped to make the plow 
 a better implement was the statesman, Thomas Jef- 
 ferson. This great man while traveling in France 
 80
 
 THE PLOW 
 
 in 1788 was struck by the clumsiness of the plows 
 used in that country. In his diary he wrote: " The 
 awkward figure of their mold-board leads one to 
 consider what should be its form." So Jefferson 
 turned his attention to mold-boards. He saw that 
 the mold-board ought to be so shaped that it would 
 move through the ground and turn the sod with the 
 least possible resistance and he planned for a mold- 
 board of this kind. By 1793 he had determined 
 
 < 
 
 FIG. II. DANIEL WEBSTER'S PLOW. 
 
 what the proper form of a mold-board should be 
 and had in actual use on his estate in Virginia several 
 plows which had mold-boards of least resistance. 
 Mr. Jefferson's patterns of the mold-board have, of 
 course, been improved upon, but he has the honor 
 of having invented the first mold-board that was 
 constructed according to scientific and mathematical 
 principles. 1 
 
 1 Daniel Webster was another great statesman who turned 
 his attention to the making of plows. He planned a plow 
 (Fig. n) and had it made in his workshop on his farm at 
 Marshfield. When the plow was ready for use, Webster him- 
 self was the first man to take hold of the handles and try it. 
 The plow worked well and the great man is said to have been 
 
 6 81
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 About the time Jefferson was working upon the 
 mold-board, Charles Newbold, a farmer of Bur- 
 lington, New Jersey, was also doing great things 
 for the improvement of the plow. We have seen 
 that the plow of this time was a patch work of wood 
 and iron. Newbold thought the plow ought to be 
 made wholly of iron and about 1796 he made one 
 of cast iron, the point, share, and mold-board all 
 
 FIG. 12. JETHRO WOOD'S PLOW, 1819. 
 
 being cast in one piece. But the New Jersey farm- 
 ers did not take kindly to the iron plow. They said 
 that iron poisoned the crops and caused weeds to 
 grow faster than ever. So Newbold could not sell 
 his plows and he was compelled to give up the busi- 
 ness in despair. 
 
 But soon the iron plow was to have its day. In 
 1819 Jethro Wood of Scipio, New York, took out 
 
 as much delighted with his achievement as he was with any of 
 his triumphs in public life at Washington. 
 82
 
 THE PLOW 
 
 a patent for a plow which was made of cast iron and 
 which combined the best features of the plow as 
 planned by Jefferson and by Newbold. In Wood's 
 plow (Fig. 12) the several parts the point, share 
 and mold-board were so fastened together that 
 when one piece wore out it could easily be replaced 
 by a new piece. In Newbold's plow when one part 
 wore out the whole plow was rendered useless. 
 Wood's plow became very popular and by 1825 it 
 was rapidly driving out the half-wooden, half-iron 
 plows of the olden time. Great improvements of 
 course have been made upon the plow since 1819, but 
 in the main features the best plows of to-day closely 
 resemble the implement invented by Jethro Wood. 
 Since our greatness as a nation is due largely to the 
 plow all honor should be given to the memory of 
 this inventor. " No citizen of the United States," 
 said William H. Seward, " has conferred greater 
 benefits on his country than Jethro Wood." 
 
 FIG. 13. THE GANG PLOW DRAWN BY HORSES. 
 83
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 * - 
 
 FIG. 14. PLOWING BY STEAM. 
 
 The plow is drawn across the field by means of cables. 
 Sometimes a traction engine moves along with the plow. 
 
 But the plow of Jethro Wood, as excellent as it 
 was, did not fully meet the needs of the western 
 farmer. The sod of the vast prairies could not be 
 broken fast enough with a plow of a single share. 
 So about the middle of the nineteenth century the 
 gang plow, a hint for which had been given long be- 
 fore (p. 78) was invented, and as this new plow 
 moved along three or four or five furrows were 
 turned at once. At first the gang plow was drawn 
 by horses (Fig. 13) but later it was drawn by steam 
 (Fig. 14). 
 
 The great gang plow drawn by steam marked the 
 last step in the development of the plow. The 
 forked stick drawn by human hands and making its 
 feeble scratch on the ground had grown until it had 
 become a mighty machine drawn across the field by 
 an unseen force and leaving in its wake a broad belt 
 of deeply-plowed and well-broken soil. 
 84
 
 THE REAPER 
 
 AFTER man had invented his rude plow and had 
 learned how to till the soil and raise the grain, 
 it became necessary for him to learn how to harvest 
 his crop, how to gather the growing grain from the 
 fields. The invention of the plow, therefore, must 
 have soon been followed by the invention of the 
 reaper. 
 
 The first grain was doubtless cut with the rude 
 straight knives used by primitive man. In time it 
 was found that 
 if the knife 
 were bent it 
 would cut the 
 grain better. So the first form of the reaper was a 
 curved or bent knife known as the sickle or reaping 
 hook (Fig. i). The knife was fastened at one end 
 to a stick which served as 
 a handle. When using 
 the sickle the harvester 
 held the grain in one hand 
 and cut it with the other. 
 (Fig. 2). 
 
 _ When the sickle first 
 THE began to be used is of 
 
 85 
 
 2. REAPING WITH 
 SICKLE.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 course unknown. Among the remains of the " stone 
 age " (p. 39) are implements of flint which resemble 
 the sickle, while among the remains of the so-called 
 " bronze age " many primitive sickles made of bronze 
 have been found. Nor do we know where the sickle 
 was first used, although Egypt seems to have been 
 the first home of the sickle just as it was the first 
 home of the plow. Upon the wall of a building of 
 ancient Thebes is a picture of an Egyptian harvest 
 scene. Two men with sickles are cutting the wheat. 
 A man following the reapers seems to be gleaning, 
 that is, picking up the wheat that the reapers have 
 cut. Other harvesters are carrying the grain to the 
 threshing place where it is tramped out by the slow 
 feet of oxen. A primitive sickle such as was used by 
 the Egyptians was used by all civilized nations in 
 ancient times, by the Hebrews, by the Greeks, and 
 by the Romans. 
 
 The first improvement upon the primitive sickle 
 was made by the Romans. About the year 100 A. 
 D. the Roman farmers, who were at the time the 
 best farmers in the world, began to use a kind of 
 scythe for cutting grass. The Roman scythe was 
 simply an improved form of the sickle; it was a 
 broad, heavy blade fastened on a long straight 
 handle, resembling the pruning hook of to-day (Fig. 
 3). The scythe was swung with both hands and it 
 was used chiefly for cutting grass. 
 
 For more than a thousand years after the appear- 
 ance of the Roman scythe agriculture in Europe was 
 86
 
 THE REAPER 
 
 everywhere neglected and little or no improvement 
 was made in farming implements. About the end of 
 the Middle Ages, however, improvements in the form 
 of the scythe began to appear. In Flanders farm- 
 ers began to use an implement known as the Hain- 
 ault scythe (Fig. 4). This scythe had a fine broad 
 blade and a curved handle. When reaping with this 
 scythe the reaper with his left hand brought the 
 
 FIG. 3. AN FIG. 4. THE HAINAULT 03 
 
 EARLY SCYTHE. FLEMISH SCYTHE, WITH HOOK. 
 
 stalks of grain together with a hook and with 
 his right hand he swung the scythe and cut the grain. 
 This scythe was an improvement upon the sickle but 
 it was still a very awkward implement. 
 
 The Hainault or Flemish scythe was followed by 
 the cradle scythe. On this scythe ( Fig. 5 ) there were 
 wooden fingers running parallel to the blade. These 
 fingers, called the cradle, caught the grain as it was 
 cut and helped to leave it in a bunch. In the early 
 cradle-scythe the fingers were few in number and they 
 ran along the blade for only a part of its length, 
 but in America during the colonial period the cradle 
 8?
 
 FIG. 5- EARLY FORM OF THE CRADLE SCYTHE. 
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 was improved 
 by lengthening 
 the fingers and 
 increasing their 
 number. A t 
 the time of the 
 Revolution the 
 improved 
 American 
 c r a d 1 e was 
 coming into use and by the end of the eighteenth 
 century it was driving out the sickle. 
 
 But even the excellent American cradle-scythe could 
 not meet the needs of the American farmer. The 
 cast iron plow which was brought into use in the 
 early part of the nineteenth century (p. 82) made 
 it possible to raise fields of wheat vastly larger than 
 had ever been raised before. But it was of no use 
 to raise great fields 
 of grain unless the 
 crop could be prop- 
 erly harvested. 
 Wheat must be cut 
 just when it is ripe 
 and the harvest sea- 
 son lasts only a few 
 days. If the broad 
 American fi e 1 d s 
 were to be plowed 
 and planted there FIG. 6. THE IMPROVED CRADLE SCYTHE.
 
 THE REAPER 
 
 would have to be a reaping machine that would 
 cut the grain faster than human hands could cut it 
 with the scythe (Fig. 6). 
 
 So about the year 1800 inventors in Europe and in 
 America took up the task of inventing a new kind 
 of reaper. The first attempts were made in Eng- 
 land where population was increasing very fast and 
 where large quantities of grain were needed to feed 
 
 
 FIG. 7. THE FIRST REAPING MACHINE, 7<D A. D. 
 
 the people. The first hints for a reaper were from a 
 machine which was used in Gaul nearly 2,000 years 
 ago. Pliny, who described for us a wonderful plow 
 used in his time (p. 77), also describes this ancient 
 reaper of the Gauls. It consisted of a large hollow 
 frame mounted on two wheels (Fig. 7). At the 
 front of the frame there was a set of teeth which 
 caught the heads of grain and tore them off. The 
 heads were raked into the box by an attendant. The 
 machine was pushed along by an ox. This kind of 
 89
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 
 machine was doubtless used in Europe for a while but 
 it was not a success. It passed out of use and for 
 many centuries it was entirely forgotten. Still, the 
 first English reaping machines were made after the 
 plan of this interesting old reaper of ancient Gaul. 
 The most remarkable of the early reapers was one 
 invented by Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster of Reming- 
 ton, England. In 1822 Ogle constructed a model 
 for a reaper which was quite different from any that 
 had appeared before and which bore a close re- 
 
 P semblance to the im- 
 
 proved reapers of a 
 1 a t e r d a t e . In 
 Ogle's reaper (Fig. 
 8) the horse walked 
 ahead beside the 
 standing grain, just 
 as it does now, and 
 the cutting appara- 
 tus was at the right, 
 just as it is now. The cutter consisted of a 
 frame at the front of which was a bar of iron 
 armed with a row of teeth projecting forward. 
 Directly under the teeth lay a long straight 
 edged knife which was moved to and fro by means 
 of a crank and which cut the grain as it came 
 between the teeth. A reel pushed the grain toward 
 the knife and there was a platform upon which the 
 grain when cut might fall. Ogle's machine did not 
 meet with much success yet it holds a very high place 
 90 
 
 FIG. 8. OGLE'S REAPER, 1822.
 
 THE REAPER 
 
 in the history of reaping machines, for it had nearly 
 all the parts of a modern reaper. 
 
 English inventors did much to prepare the way for 
 a good reaping machine but the first really suc- 
 cessful reaper, the first reaper that actually reaped, 
 was made in the United States. In the summer of 
 1831, Cyrus McCormick, a young blacksmith living 
 in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, made a trial 
 of a reaper which 
 he and his father 
 had invented 
 how much they had 
 learned from Ogle 
 we do not know 
 and the trial was 
 successful (Fig. 
 9). With two 
 horses he cut six 
 acres of oats in an 
 afternoon. " Such 
 a thing," says Mr. 
 Casson in his life of McCormick, " at the time was 
 incredible. It was equal to the work of six laborers 
 with scythes or twenty-four peasants with sickles. It 
 was as marvelous as though a man had walked down 
 the street carrying a dray horse on his back." 
 
 Although McCormick had his reaper in successful 
 operation by 1831 he did not take out a patent for 
 the machine until 1834. One year before this (in 
 Obed Hussey, a sailor living in Baltimore, 
 91 
 
 FIG. p. THE FIRST MCCORMICK REAPER.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 took out a patent for a reaper that was successful 
 and that was in many respects as famous a machine 
 as McCormick's. So while McCormick was the first 
 in the field with his invention, Hussey was the first 
 to secure a patent. The ma- 
 chines of McCormick and 
 Hussey were very much alike : 
 both had the platform, the 
 iron bar armed with guards 
 and the long knife moving to 
 and fro. The most remark- 
 
 FIC. 10. THE KNIFE 
 
 BLADE CF HUSSEY'S able feature of Hussey s ma- 
 chine was the knife which con- 
 sisted of thin triangular plates of steel sharpened on 
 two edges and riveted side by side upon a flat bar 
 (Fig. 10). The saw-like teeth of Hussey's knife 
 caught the wheat between the guards and cut it bet- 
 ter than any knife that had as yet appeared. Both 
 the McCormick reapers and the Hussey reapers were 
 practical and successful and each of these inventors 
 performed a noble part in giving the world the 
 reaper it needed. 
 
 The McCormick and the Hussey reapers gave new 
 life to farming in the United States. Especially was 
 the reaper a blessing to the Western farmers. In 
 1844 McCormick took a trip through the West, 
 passing through Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa. 
 As he passed through Illinois he saw how badly the 
 reaper was needed. He saw great fields of ripe 
 wheat thrown open to be devoured by hogs and cattle 
 92
 
 THE REAPER 
 
 because there were not enough laborers to harvest 
 the crops. The farmers had worked day and night 
 and their wives and children had worked but they 
 could not harvest the grain; they had raised more 
 than the scythe and sickle could cut. McCormick 
 saw that the West was the natural home for the 
 reaper and in 1847 he moved to Chicago, built a 
 factory, and began to make reapers. In less than a 
 year he had orders for 500 machines and before ten 
 years had passed he 
 had sold nearly 
 25,000 reapers. It 
 was these reapers 
 that caused the 
 frontier line to 
 move westward at 
 the rate of thirty 
 miles a year. 
 
 Improvements KIU - n - REAPER PROVIDED WITH SEAT 
 
 . . FOR THE RAKER. 
 
 upon the machines 
 
 of Hussey and McCormick came thick and fast. 
 One of the first improvements was to remove 
 the grain from the platform in a better way. 
 With the first machines a man followed the 
 reaper (Fig. 9) and removed the grain with a 
 rake. Then a seat was provided and the man 
 sat (Fig. n) on the reaper and raked off the grain. 
 Finally the self-raking reaper was invented. In this 
 machine, as it appeared in its completed form about 
 1865, the reel and rake were combined. The reel 
 93,
 
 'STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 consisted of a number of revolving arms each of 
 which carried a rake (Fig. 12). As the arms re- 
 volved they not only moved the standing grain to- 
 ward the knife, but they also swept the platform and 
 raked off the wheat in neat bunches ready to be bound 
 into sheaves. So the self-raking reaper saved the 
 
 FIG. 12 SELF-RAKING REAPER. 
 
 labor of the man who raked the wheat from the plat- 
 form. 
 
 Because it saved the labor of one man the self-rak- 
 ing reaper was for a time the king of reaping ma- 
 chines. But it did not remain king long, for soon 
 there came into the harvest fields a reaper that saved 
 the labor of several men. This was the self-binder. 
 With the older machines, as the grain was raked off 
 the platform it was gathered and bound into sheaves 
 94
 
 THE REAPER 
 
 by men who followed the reaper, one reaper requir- 
 ing the services of three or four or five human bind- 
 ers. With the self-binder (Fig. 13) the grain was 
 gathered into sheaves and neatly tied without the aid 
 of human hands. At first, wire was used in bind- 
 ing the sheaves but by 1880 most self-binders were 
 
 FIG. 13. A 
 
 -BINDING REAPER. 
 
 using twine. So the self-binder saved the labor not 
 only of the man who raked the grain from the plat- 
 form but it saved the labor of all the binders as well. 
 The last step in the development of the reaper was 
 taken when the complete harvester was invented. 
 This machine cuts the standing grain, threshes it, 
 winnows 1 it, and places it in sacks (Fig. 14). As 
 
 1 To winnow grain is to separate it from the chaff by a fanning 
 process. 
 
 95
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 this giant reaper travels over the field one sees on 
 one side the cutting bar 15 to 25 feet in length slic- 
 ing its way through the wheat, while on the other 
 
 FIG. 14. A COMBINED HARVESTER AND THRESHER 
 
 side of the machine streams of grain run into sacks 
 which, as fast as they are filled, are hauled to the 
 barn or to the nearest railway station. The com- 
 plete harvester is either drawn by horses 30 or 
 40 in number or by a powerful engine. It cuts 
 and threshes 100 acres of wheat in a day and the 
 cost is less than 50 cents an acre. It does as much 
 work in a day as could have been done by a hundred 
 men before the days of McCormick. Of all the 
 wonderful machines used by farmers the most won- 
 derful is the complete harvester, the latest and the 
 greatest of reapers.
 
 THE MILL 
 
 
 FIG. I. THE FIRST MILL. 
 
 THE first mill was a hole made in a stationary 
 rock (Fig. i). The grain was placed in the 
 
 hole and crushed with a stone held in the hand. On 
 
 Centre street in 
 
 Trenton, New Jer- 
 sey, not many years 
 
 ago one of these 
 
 primitive mills could 
 
 still be seen and 
 
 there are evidences 
 
 that such mills once 
 
 existed in all parts 
 
 of the world. In those places where the earth 
 
 did not supply the stationary rock, stones were 
 
 brought from afar and hollowed out into cup-like 
 form and in these the grind- 
 ing was done. 
 
 The mill which consisted 
 of a hole in a rock and a 
 stone in the hands was fol- 
 lowed by the " knocking- 
 stane " and mallet ( Fig. 2 ) . 
 The " knocking-stane " was 
 a mortar, or cup-shaped 
 97 
 
 FIG. 
 
 2. THE KNOCKING 
 
 STANE. 
 7
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 vessel made of stone; the mallet was usually made of 
 wood. The grain was placed in the mortar and 
 struck repeatedly with the mallet, the beating being 
 kept up until a coarse flour was produced. This is 
 an exceedingly rude method of crushing grain, yet 
 this is the way the people in some parts of Scotland 
 grind their barley at the present time. 
 
 At a very early 
 date the " knocking- 
 s t a n e " was laid 
 aside for the mortar 
 and pestle (Fig. 3) 
 almost everywhere. 
 In this mill the grain 
 instead of being 
 struck with a ham- 
 mer was pounded 
 with a pestle. The 
 bottom of the pestle 
 was frequently cov- 
 ered with iron in 
 which grooves were 
 cut. As the man 
 pounded he found that when he gave the pestle a 
 twirling or rotary motion as it fell it ground the 
 grain much faster. We may be sure that after this 
 was learned the twirling motion was always given. 
 
 The mortar and pestle were followed by the slab- 
 mill (Fig. 4) . Here the grain was ground by being 
 rubbed between two stones. Dr. Livingstone, the 
 
 FIG. 3. MORTAR AND PESTLE MILL.
 
 THE MILL 
 
 great African explorer, gives the following descrip- 
 tion of a slab-mill which he saw in operation in South 
 Africa. "The operator kneeling grasps the upper 
 
 
 FIG. 4. THE SLAB-MILL. 
 
 millstone with both hands and works it backwards 
 and forwards in the hollow of the lower millstone, 
 in the same way that a baker works his dough. 
 The weight of the person is brought to bear on the 
 movable stone and while it is pressed and pushed 
 forward and backward one hand supplies every now 
 and then a little grain to be bruised and ground." 
 As we have seen, the primitive miller gradually 
 learned that the pestle did better work when it fell 
 with a twirling motion. This little bit of experience 
 led to important results in the development of the 
 mill. If the grinding were done better with a twirl- 
 99
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 ing motion, why not have as much of the twirling mo- 
 tion as possible ? Why not make the upper stone go 
 round and round? This was what was done. The 
 upper stone was caused to turn round and round. 
 The wheel-mill, the mill of the upper and nether mill- 
 stone (Fig. 5), was invented. When and where it 
 was invented we cannot tell for it was in use among all 
 
 civilized peoples 
 before history 
 began to be writ- 
 ten. There were 
 many kinds of 
 wheel - mills 
 among the na- 
 tions of an- 
 tiquity and in 
 principle they 
 were all alike 
 
 FIG. 5. THE UPPER AND NETHER MILL- j n COttStrUCtion 
 
 STONE. 
 
 How they work- 
 ed may, be learned by studying Figure 5 which rep- 
 resents a mill used in ancient India. The upper 
 stone is placed upon the pivot projecting from the 
 center of the lower (nether) stone, and caused to 
 revolve by means of the handle. The grain when 
 placed in the hollow at the center of the upper stone 
 (Fig. 5) works its way down between the stones and 
 comes out at the circumference ground, bran and 
 flour together. The mill was fed with grain by the 
 operator. The first hopper was a human hand. 
 100
 
 THE MILL 
 
 FIG. 6. AN ANCIENT JEWISH MILL. 
 
 FIG. 7- AN OLD ROMAN MILL. 
 IOI
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 We have here several pictures of ancient mills. 
 Figure 6 is an ancient Jewish mill. As we look at it 
 ijgjjjjjjjjjjjj^jjj^j^ we may recall the 
 
 words, "Two 
 women shall be 
 grinding at a mill, 
 the one shall b e 
 taken, and the other 
 left." l Figure 7 is 
 an old Roman mill 
 , fe bearing a strong re- 
 
 semblance to the 
 coffee mill that is 
 used in our kitchens. 
 
 FIG. 8. A SCOTTISH QUERN. 
 
 Figure 8 is a Scot- 
 tish quern, a mill 
 that may still be 
 found in use, it is 
 said, in some parts 
 of Scotland. Figure 
 9 is an old flour mill 
 dug from the ruins 
 of the city of Pom- 
 peii which was de- 
 stroyed by an erup- 
 tion in the year 79 
 A. D. Figure i o 
 shows the construc- 
 
 FIG. 9. POMPEIAN FLOUR MILL, 79 A. D. 
 
 1 Matthew xxiv, 41. 
 was done by women. 
 
 In ancient times nearly all the grinding 
 
 IO2
 
 THE MILL 
 
 tion of this interesting mill. The upper (outer) 
 stone is shaped like an hour-glass, the upper half of 
 which serves as a hopper; the lower half turns upon 
 the cone-shaped low- 
 er stone and does 
 the grinding. The 
 mill was operated by 
 the projecting han- 
 dles, the operators 
 walking round and 
 round the mill. 
 Sometimes it was 
 turned by human 
 power, sometimes by 
 horses or oxen. 
 
 The Pompeian 
 mill shows that as 
 early as the first 
 century the Romans 
 ground their grain 
 by animal power. 
 
 Indeed about this time a still greater change was made 
 in the method of grinding grain. When Julius Cassar 
 flourished (50 B. c.) men began to harness the 
 power of running water and make it turn their 
 mills (Fig. u). From Figure 12 we may easily 
 learn how this was done. The running water turns 
 the wheel and in doing so turns the upper mill- 
 stone. A hopper is suspended from the roof by 
 ropes. Through this the grain passes into the mill. 
 103 
 
 FIG. 10. SHOWING THE INTERIOR OF 
 POMl'EIAN MILL.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 FIG. II. THE FIRST WATER-MILL, 5O B. 
 
 FIG. 12. SHOWING THE INTERIOR OF THE FIRST 
 WATER-MILL. 
 
 I0 4
 
 THE MILL 
 
 Here was a great saving in human labor and a 
 great advancement in mill making. A Roman writer 
 of Caesar's time appreciating how great a blessing 
 was the invention of the water-mill exclaimed : 
 
 Ye maids who toiled so faithful at the mill 
 
 Now cease from work and from these toils be still ; 
 
 Sleep now till dawn and let the birds with glee 
 
 Sing to the ruddy morn, on bush and tree; 
 
 For what your hands performed so long, so true, 
 
 Ceres l has charged the water-nymphs to do ; 
 
 They come, the limpid sisters, to her call, 
 
 And on the wheel with dashing fury fall ; 
 
 Impel the axle with a whirling sound 
 
 And make the massive millstone reel around 
 
 And bring the floury heap luxuriant to the ground. 
 
 Nothing can be simpler than the water-mill de- 
 scribed above; it was the old mill of the upper and 
 nether millstones, the old hand mill turned by water. 
 That was all. Yet, as simple as it was, many cen- 
 turies passed after its invention before a new princi- 
 ple in flour making was discovered. There were in- 
 ventions for lowering and raising the stone so as to 
 grind finer or coarser as might be desired, and there 
 were improvements in the kind of water wheels em- 
 ployed, and better methods of sifting the flour from 
 the bran were discovered from time to time, but the 
 water-mill invented in the time of Julius Caesar re- 
 mained practically unchanged until the early part of 
 
 1 Ceres was the goddess of grain. 
 105
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 the nineteenth century, when the last step in the 
 
 development of the mill was taken. 1 
 
 About 1810 millers in Austria, more particularly 
 
 those in Vienna, began to grind their grain by passing 
 
 it between two horizontal rollers (Fig. 13). The 
 rollers were spirally groov- 
 ed and turned toward each 
 other. There was a wide 
 difference between this proc- 
 ess and the one to which the 
 world was accustomed, yet 
 the new method was found 
 to be better than the old one. 
 
 FIG. 13. AN EARLY FLOUR Austrian flour and Austrian 
 
 ROLLER-MILL. 
 
 bread became famous. 1 he 
 
 delicious Vienna bread on our tables of course has 
 never seen Vienna. It is called " Vienna bread " 
 because it is made out of a kind of flour which 
 was first ground in the Austrian capital. The 
 Austrian way of grinding grew rapidly into favor 
 among millers everywhere. In the United States 
 where there was so much wheat to be ground the 
 roller process was taken up eagerly and improved 
 upon as only Americans know how to improve upon 
 an idea. In the flour mills of the West the grain 
 was soon passing through a series of rollers. By 
 the first pair of rollers the grain was simply cracked 
 
 1 In the thirteenth century wind-power began to be used for 
 turning mills, and in some countries windmills were as common 
 as water-mills. 
 
 106
 
 THE MILL 
 
 into pieces somewhat coarse. Then after being 
 bolted (sifted) it was passed between a second pair of 
 rollers and reduced to a greater fineness. Then it 
 was bolted again and passed between a third pair of 
 
 FIG. 14. A MODERN FLOUR ROLLER-MILL. 
 
 rollers. The rolling and sifting continued until a 
 practically pure flour was obtained. A pure flour 
 is the modern miller's ideal. He wants a branless 
 flour and a flourless bran. The old stone mill could 
 not grind this kind of flour. Before the roller mill 
 107
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 appeared there was always bran in the flour and 
 flour in the bran. 
 
 The invention of the flour roller-mill (Fig. 14) 
 is the last step in the development of the mill. The 
 roller process has almost entirely driven out all other 
 processes. Now and then we see by the roadside 
 an old fashioned mill with the upper and nether 
 stone, but we seldom see one that is prosperous 
 and thriving. Millers, like everybody else in these 
 days, do business on a large scale and to make flour 
 on a large scale they must use the roller-mill. Thus 
 the hole in the rock in which a handful of grain was 
 laboriously crushed has, through long ages of growth, 
 become the great factory in which thousands of bar- 
 rels of flour are made in a day. 
 
 108
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 HAVE you ever seen a loom ? It would not be a 
 wonder if you have not. In these days the 
 average person seldom sees one. Everyone knows in 
 a vague sort of way that clothes and carpets are made 
 of wool or silk or cotton, as the case may be, and 
 that they are woven upon an instrument called a loom. 
 This is about as much as we usually know about the 
 clothes we wear or the carpets we walk upon. We 
 buy these things from the store and that is all there 
 is to it. In the olden times, and not so very long 
 ago either, everybody knew something about weaving, 
 at least every girl and woman knew something of 
 the art, and a loom was as familiar an object in the 
 household then as a sewing machine is now. 
 
 Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles 
 Scarlet and blue and green, with distaff spinning the golden 
 Flax for the gossiping loom, whose noisy shuttle within doors 
 Mingled their sounds with the whir of the wheels and the 
 songs of the maidens. 
 
 This picture of home life in Acadia two hundred 
 years ago would have served as a picture of home 
 life almost everywhere in the civilized world. From 
 the beginning of history until modern times most of 
 109
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 
 the weaving was done by the women in the 
 home. 
 
 The earliest practical weaver on record is the spider 
 and it may be that man learned his first lesson in 
 weaving from this skill- 
 ed little workman (Fig. 
 i ) ; or the beautiful 
 nest of the weaver-bird 
 may have given to hu- 
 man beings the first 
 hints in the weaving 
 art. Whoever may 
 have been his teacher, 
 it is certain that man 
 learned how to weave 
 in the earliest stages of 
 existence. It is thought 
 that his first effort in this direction consisted in 
 making cages for animals and wiers (traps) for 
 catching fish (Fig. 2) by interlacing vines or canes 
 or slender boughs. The next step was taken when 
 women began to make baskets and cradles and mats 
 by interlacing long slender strips of wood (Fig. 3). 
 Basket weaving led to cloth weaving, and this 
 led to the loom. In Figure 4 we see the simplest 
 and oldest form of the loom. It consisted of a single 
 stick (yarn beam) of wood about four feet long. 
 This was the first form of the loom just a straight 
 stick of wood and nothing more. From the stick the 
 threads which run lengthwise in the cloth were sus- 
 no 
 
 I. THE FIRST LESSON 
 WEAVING.
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 FIG. 2. A \V1ER TRAP OK T11E VIRGINIA INDIANS 
 
 ,\Hn- 
 
 FIG. 3 PRIMITIVE BASKET MAKIN 
 II I
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 pended. These threads are known as the warp. 
 The threads which run breadthwise in the cloth are 
 known as the weft, or woof. As the woman's deft 
 
 FIG. 4. THE PRIMITIVE LOOM. 
 
 fingers pass along with the weft she carries the thread 
 over the first warp thread, under the second, over 
 the third, under the fourth, and so on. Here we 
 have not only the simplest form of the loom but the 
 simplest kind of cloth. 
 
 In the loom worked by the Pueblo woman (Fig. 5 ) 
 a new piece appears. This is the frame through 
 which the threads of the warp pass and which the 
 woman is holding in her right hand. The frame 
 is called a heald, or heddle (Fig. 6). The heddle is 
 of the greatest importance in the construction of the 
 
 112
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 loom and it is well worth while to understand what 
 it does. In the loom operated by the Chilcoot woman 
 (Fig. 4) you noticed that the weaver passed the weft 
 thread above and below the alternate threads of the 
 warp. This required a separate movement for every 
 thread of the warp; if there were a hundred threads 
 a hundred movements were required to pass the weft 
 across once. Now the heddle used by the Pueblo 
 woman separated the fifty warp threads that were 
 to pass above the weft thread from the fifty that 
 were to pass below it, making an opening called a 
 shed. When the shed was made the weft thread 
 could be passed across at one movement. One move- 
 ment instead of a hundred! How was this accom- 
 plished? Fifty alternate warp threads were passed 
 through the holes in the bars of the heddle 
 frame, one thread through each hole; the other 
 fifty alternate threads passed between the bars 
 113
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 of the heddle frame. Now suppose the entire 
 warp of a hundred threads is stretched tight and 
 firm between the woman's body and the yarn 
 beam. With her right hand she raises the heddle 
 and thus lifts the fifty threads which pass through the 
 holes in the bars, while the other fifty threads remain 
 unmoved. This movement makes the passage or 
 
 T\ 
 
 FIG. 6. THE HEDDLE. 
 
 shed through which she passes the weft with the left 
 hand. After beating the weft thread close to the 
 cloth either with the fingers or with a sword-like 
 stick, she lowers the heddle with its fifty threads, the 
 other fifty still remain fixed and unmoved. Another 
 shed is formed and the weft is passed through again. 
 Thus with the raising and lowering of the heddle the 
 weft is passed backward and forward and the weav- 
 114
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 ing goes on quite rapidly. If you care to do so you 
 
 can make a Pueblo loom and can weave a belt on it. 
 
 In the old African loom represented in Fig. 7 we 
 
 find several i m - 
 
 provements upon 
 
 the loom of the 
 
 Pueblo woman. In 
 
 the first place, it has 
 
 two heddles instead 
 
 of one. These are 
 
 operated by the feet, 
 
 leaving the hands 
 
 free to do other 
 
 work. In the second 
 
 place, the wooden 
 
 frame which the 
 
 weaver holds in his 
 
 right hand is not 
 
 t o be seen in the 
 
 Pueblo loom. This 
 
 frame called the batten, or lathe, contains the reed, 
 
 which is a series of slats or bars between which 
 
 the threads of the warp pass after they leave the 
 
 heddle. When the weaver has thrown the weft 
 
 through the shed he brings the batten down hard and 
 
 the reed drives the last weft thread close to the 
 
 woven part of the cloth. The reed takes the place 
 
 of the sword-like stick used by the Pueblo woman. 
 
 Last and most important : in the African's left hand 
 
 is the shuttle, or little car weaver's ship, the Ger- 
 
 FIG. 7. AN O
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 mans call it which carries the weft across 
 (Fig. 8). 
 
 The loom described above seems to be clumsy and 
 rude when compared with a loom of the present day, 
 yet it is really the kind of loom which was used by 
 
 FIG. 8. A PRIMITIVE SHUTTLE. 
 
 nearly all civilized people from the dawn of their civ- 
 ilization to the middle of the eighteenth century. It 
 is the loom of history and poetry and song. Upon a 
 loom of this kind was woven Joseph's coat with its 
 many colors and the garment which the fair Penelope 
 made when she deceived her suitors. Of course as 
 the centuries passed the parts of the loom were better 
 made and weavers became more skilful. In Figure 9 
 we have the loom as it appeared in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. If we inspect it closely we shall find it to be 
 merely the old African loom mounted on stout up- 
 right timbers instead of being mounted on a tripod 
 made of poles. With her feet the weaver works the 
 heddle, with her right hand she throws the shuttle, 
 with her left she draws toward her the swinging 
 batten and drives the weft home with the reed. 
 
 The year 1733 is a most important date in the 
 development of the loom for in that year John Kay, 
 a practical loommaker of Lancashire, England, in- 
 vented the flying shuttle and thus did more for the 
 116
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 loom than any man whom we can distinguish by 
 name. To appreciate the great service of Kay we 
 must recall how the shuttle was operated before his 
 time. You remember it was thrown through the 
 
 FIG . 9. A LOOM OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 shed by one of the weaver's hands and caught and 
 returned by the other hand. Sometimes it was 
 caught and returned by a boy. This was at best a 
 slow process and unless the weaver had an assistant 
 117
 
 ' STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 to return the shuttle only narrow pieces could be 
 woven. The common width of cloth, three-fourths 
 of a yard, had its origin in necessity. The weav- 
 er's arms were not long enough to weave a wider 
 piece. " The essence of Kay's invention was that 
 the shuttle was thrown from side to side by a me- 
 chanical device instead of being passed from hand 
 to hand. One hand only was required for the shuttle 
 while the other was left free to beat up the cloth 
 
 FIG. IO. KAY S FLYING SHUTTLE. 
 
 (with the batten) after each throw, and the shuttle 
 would fly across wide cloth as well as narrow." 
 You will be able to understand Kay's invention by 
 studying Figure 10 which shows how the flying shuttle 
 worked. G is a groove (shuttle-race) on which the 
 shuttle runs as it crosses through the shed leaving 
 its thread behind it. / and / are boxes which the 
 shuttle (Fig. n) enters at the end of the journey. 
 In each box is a driver K sliding freely on the 
 polished rod F. The weaver with his right hand 
 118
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 pulls the handle H and K drives the shuttle to the 
 opposite side. With his left hand he works the 
 reed, with his feet he works the heddle. 
 
 The profits of Kay's invention were stolen, his 
 house was destroyed by a mob and he himself was 
 driven to a foreign country where he died in poverty. 
 Yet he deserves high rank among the benefactors 
 of mankind, for the flying shuttle doubled the power 
 of the loom and improved the quality of the cloth 
 
 o 
 
 FIG. II. A MODERN SHUTTLE. 
 
 woven. Kay's invention was the first step in a great 
 industrial revolution. The increased power of the 
 loom called for more yarn than the old spinning 
 wheel could supply. Hargreaves and Arkwright set 
 their wits to work and made their wonderful spin- 
 ning machine, and the demands of the loom were 
 supplied. So great was the supply of yarn that the 
 hand loom was behind with its work. Then in order 
 to keep up with the spinning machine the power- 
 loom was invented. Heddle and batten and shuttle 
 were now driven by a force of nature and all the 
 weaver had to do was to keep the shuttle filled with 
 thread and see that his loom worked properly. At 
 first the water-wheel was used to drive the power- 
 loom but later the steam-engine was made to do this 
 119
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 work. All this was changing the face of the civ- 
 ilized world. Hitherto weavers and spinners had 
 worked for themselves in their homes or in their own 
 shops; now they were gathered in large factories 
 where they worked as wage earners for an employer. 
 Hitherto industry had been carried on in small vil- 
 lages; the great factories drew the people to large 
 industrial centers and the era of crowded cities be- 
 gan. 
 
 Following the invention of the power-loom in the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century came the in- 
 vention of Joseph Jacquard of Lyons, France. This 
 very ingenious man in 1801 invented a substitute for 
 the heddle. We cannot readily understand the 
 workings of Jacquard's wonderful " attachment," as 
 his substitute for the heddle is called, but we ought 
 to know what the great Frenchman did for the loom. 
 In Figure 12 you see that the cloth which is ex- 
 posed shows that beautiful designs have been woven 
 into it. This is what Jacquard did for the loom. 
 He made it weave into the cloth whatever design, 
 color or tint one might desire. He made the loom 
 a mechanical artist rivaling in excellence the work of a 
 human artist. The Jacquard loom has brought 
 about a revolution in man's, and especially in woman's 
 dress. With the old loom, colors and designs could 
 be woven into cloth but only very slowly, and goods 
 with fancy patterns were made at a cost that was 
 so great that only the rich could afford to buy. In 
 the olden times, therefore, almost everybody wore 
 120
 
 THE LOOM 
 
 FIG. 12. THE JACQUARD LOOM. 
 
 121
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 plain clothes. With Jacquard's attachment the most 
 beautiful figures can be cheaply woven into the com- 
 monest fabrics. As far as weaving is concerned, it 
 costs no more to have beautiful figures in cotton 
 goods than it does to have them in silk. As a re- 
 sult the poor as well as the rich can dress as their 
 taste and fancy may suggest. 
 
 The last century brought improvements in the 
 weaving art as every century before it brought im- 
 provements, but the changes made since Jacquard's 
 time need not concern us. The story of the loom 
 ends with the Jacquard " attachment." Perhaps no 
 other of man's inventions has a more interesting de- 
 velopment than the loom. We can see it grow, piece 
 by piece. First a simple stick from which dangle the 
 threads of the warp; then the heddle, then the shut- 
 tle, then the reed, then the shuttle-race and the 
 swiftly flying shuttle, and last the Frenchman's won- 
 derful device for weaving in colors and fancy figures. 
 
 122
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 MAN has always been a builder. Like squir- 
 rels and beavers and birds he provides him- 
 self a home as by instinct. The kind of house 
 erected by a people in the beginning depended upon 
 the surroundings, upon the enemies that prowled 
 about, upon the climate, upon the building materials 
 close at hand. In a hilly, rocky region primitive 
 folk built one kind of house, in a forest they built 
 another kind, in a low marshy district they built still 
 another kind. In all cases they took the materials 
 that were the easiest to get and erected the kind of 
 dwelling place that would afford the greatest safety 
 and comfort. 
 
 If one could have traveled over the earth during 
 the first days of man's history one would doubtless 
 have found that dwellings were made of wood, for 
 in those days the greater part of the earth was cov- 
 ered with forests. To build a home in the forest 
 was the simplest of tasks. All that was necessary 
 was to fasten together the tops of several saplings, 
 interlace the saplings with boughs (Fig. i) and 
 cover the frame with skins of animals or thatch it 
 with leaves and grass. A cone-shaped structure of 
 this pattern, a tent, or hut, or wigwam, was the first 
 123
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 FIG. I. BUILDING A HOUSE WITH 
 
 I2 4
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 house of all primitive people who lived where there 
 was plenty of wood. 
 
 In many regions, especially in parts of northwest- 
 ern Europe, the wigwam or hut was not always the 
 most suitable dwelling place for early man. In 
 hilly and mountainous districts and along streams 
 where shores were overhung by rocks or pierced by 
 caverns the first inhabitants found that a hollow in 
 
 FIG. 2. A CAVE-DWELLING. 
 
 the earth was the best kind of house. Sometimes 
 the house of the cave-dwellers was made by Nature 
 (Fig. 2) ; sometimes it was an artificial living-place 
 dug in the side of a hill or mountain. The cave was 
 truly a rude and gloomy home, yet there was a time 
 when large numbers of the human race lived in caves. 
 The Zuni Indians of Arizona in seeking a refuge 
 from their enemies built their homes far up in steep 
 125
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 cliffs where it was almost impossible for a stranger 
 to go. 
 
 Coming down from the highlands to the lowlands 
 where there were swamps and marshes or where in- 
 land lakes were numerous, we find that the first 
 houses were built upon piles driven in the water or 
 
 in the mud 
 (Fig. 3). 
 These 1 a k e - 
 
 *-~w '- dwellin g s ' as 
 
 ed, were gener- 
 ally connected 
 with the main- 
 land by gang- 
 ways of wooden piers, although sometimes they 
 could be approached only by boat. In the floors 
 of some of these curious dwellings were trap- 
 doors through which baskets could be lowered 
 for catching- fish in the lake below. The chil- 
 dren of the lake-dwellers were tethered by the 
 feet to keep them from falling into the water. 
 The beautiful city of Venice in its infancy was a 
 community of lake-dwellers. The rough canoe 
 of the lake-dwelling time has developed into the 
 graceful gondola, and the rude wooden pier has 
 grown to be the magnificent Rialto. 
 
 In many regions the most convenient building 
 material is stone and all over the earth there are 
 126 
 
 FIG. 3. LAKE-DWELLINGS. RESTORED. 
 
 (From Troyon.)
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 proofs to show that building with stone began at 
 a very early date. The stones in the earliest stone 
 structures were rough and unhewn and were laid 
 without mortar or cement (Fig. 4) yet they were 
 sometimes fitted together with such nicety that a thin 
 knife blade could not be passed between them. Re- 
 
 ne. 4. A PRIMITIVE STONE HOUSE. 
 
 mains of stone houses built many thousands of years 
 ago may be seen in Peru, Mexico, Italy, and Greece. 
 These primitive dwellings were humble and simple, 
 but they were made of good material and they were 
 well built. They have weathered the storms of 
 ages and they have remained standing while later 
 and more pretentious buildings have crumbled and 
 disappeared. 
 
 127
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 The illustrations of early building which have 
 been given will make plain the truth that the people 
 of a particular country have taken the materials 
 nearest at hand and have constructed their homes 
 according to their particular needs. Now since the 
 beginnings of house building have been different in 
 different parts of the earth, the story of the house 
 will not be the same in all countries. In China and 
 Japan, where the light bamboo has always flourished 
 and has always been used in building, the house has 
 had one development; in countries where granite 
 and marble and heavy timber abound it has had an- 
 other and an entirely different development. What 
 then is the story of the house as we see it in our 
 country? Can this story be told? As one passes 
 through an American city looking at the public build- 
 ings and churches and stores and dwellings can one 
 go back to the beginning and trace step by step the 
 growth of the house and tell how these came to be 
 what they are? Let us see if this cannot be done. 
 
 Our story takes us back many thousands of years 
 to Egypt, the cradle of civilization. From Egypt 
 it will take us to Greece, thence to Rome, thence to 
 the countries of Northern Europe, thence to Amer- 
 ica. What kind of houses did the Egyptians first 
 build? They built as simple a structure as can be 
 imagined; they erected four walls and over these 
 they placed a flat roof (Fig. 5). The roof was 
 made flat because in Egypt there is scarcely any 
 rain and there was no need for a roof with a slant. 
 128
 
 THE .HOUSE 
 
 I-.}- 1 
 
 FIG. 5. AN EGYPTIAN HOUSE. 
 
 FIG. 6. AN ANCIENT HEBREW DWELLING. 
 129
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 In all those countries where rain seldom falls, or 
 never falls, the flat roof is the natural roof (Fig. 6). 
 
 FIG. 7. INTERIOR OF AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN 
 PALACE. 
 
 Although their buildings were simple in construc- 
 tion the Egyptians left behind them most remark- 
 able specimens of the builder's art. Their pyra- 
 130
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 mids and monuments and sphinxes and palaces have 
 always been foremost among the great wonders of 
 the world. Figure 7 shows the interior of an 
 ancient Egyptian palace. This palace had only an 
 awning for a roof. That was all that was neces- 
 sary to keep out the rays of the sun. Notice the 
 lofty pillars or columns of this building. You see 
 they are adorned above or below with the figure of 
 the lotus, the national flower of the Egyptians. 
 The column, as we shall see, plays an important part 
 in the history of the house and it was ancient Egypt 
 that gave the world its first lessons in the art of mak- 
 ing columns. 
 
 From Egypt we pass over " the sea " to Greece. 
 The Greeks borrowed ideas wherever they could 
 and in the matter of architecture they borrowed 
 heavily from Egypt. But they did not borrow the 
 flat roof of the Egyptians. In Greece there was 
 some rainfall and this fact had to be taken into ac- 
 count when building a house; the roof had to slant 
 so that the rain could run off. Now the Greeks 
 taught the world the best way to make a slanting 
 roof. They made the roof to slant in two direc- 
 tions from a central ridge (Fig. 8) instead of hav- 
 ing the entire roof to slant in one direction like an 
 ugly shed. The slant was gentle because there was 
 no snow to be carried off. The roof of two slants 
 formed a gable. The Greeks, then, were the in- 
 ventors of the gable. The column they borrowed 
 from Egypt. But whenever the Greeks borrowed
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 an invention or an idea they nearly always im- 
 proved upon it. Instead of slavishly imitating the 
 Egyptian columns they tried to make better ones 
 and they were so successful that they soon became 
 the teachers of the world in column making. 
 
 The oldest and strongest of the Greek columns 
 
 FIG. 8. A GREEK DWELLING. 
 
 belong to what is known as the Doric order (Fig. 
 9), a name given to them because they were first 
 made by the Dorians, the original Greek dwellers 
 in Europe. Aside from the flutes or channels which 
 ran throughout its length the Doric column was 
 perfectly plain. In the older Doric columns even 
 132
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 the flutes are absent. Its capital or top, was with- 
 out ornament. Later the graceful and elegant 
 
 ft 
 
 i 
 
 FIG. Q. THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 
 
 Ionic pillar (Fig. 9) came into fashion. We can 
 always distinguish an Ionic column by the volute or 
 scroll at its capital. The latest of the Greek 
 columns was the Corinthian (Fig. 9), the lightest, 
 the most slender and the most richly decorated of 
 all. A cluster of acanthus leaves at its capital is 
 the most prominent ornament of the Corinthian 
 column. The Greeks carried the art of column 
 making to such perfection that even to this day we 
 imitate their patterns. A column in a modern 
 building is almost certain to be a Greek column. It 
 
 133
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 is worth one's while, therefore, to be able to tell 
 one Greek column from another. One can do this 
 by remembering (i) that the Doric column is per- 
 fectly plain and has no capital; (2) that the Ionic 
 column has a scroll at the capital; (3) that the 
 capital of the Corinthian column is adorned with a 
 cluster of acanthus leaves. 
 
 FIG. IO. AN OLD ROMAN ARCH. 
 
 Our story now takes us to Italy. Greece fell be- 
 fore the power of Rome 146 B.C., but before she fell 
 she had taught her conquerors a great deal about 
 architecture. Indeed the Romans took up the art 
 of building where the Greeks left it. They needed 
 the Greek gable for they had rains, and the Greek 
 column recommended itself to them on account of 
 its beauty. They used the best features of Grecian 
 134
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 architecture and added a feature that was largely 
 their own. This was the arch. The Greeks, like 
 the Egyptians before them, bridged over the open- 
 ings of doors and windows and the spaces between 
 columns by means of straight wooden beams or 
 long blocks of stone. The Romans bridged over 
 these spaces with the arch (Fig. 10). If you will 
 study the arch you will see that it is a curved struc- 
 ture which is supported by its own curve. You will 
 also see that it is a structure of great strength. The 
 greater the weight placed upon it, providing its 
 bases are supported, the stronger it gets. In teach- 
 ing the world how to make arches Rome added to 
 the house an element of great strength and beauty. 
 With the arch came the tall building. In Greece a 
 house was never more than two stories high. In 
 Rome arch rose upon arch (Fig. n); the dome 
 which is itself a kind of arch appeared and palaces 
 were piled story upon story until they seemed to 
 reach the skies. 
 
 From Italy we pass to northern Europe. The 
 power of Rome fell 476 A.D., but before that date 
 the greater part of Europe had been Romanized, 
 and the Roman way of building with column and 
 arch and dome had been learned in France and Ger- 
 many and England. But the climate of those 
 countries was different from that of Italy and a 
 slight change in the Roman way of building was 
 necessary. In the northern countries there were 
 heavy rains and snows and a roof with a gentle 
 135
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 slope was not suitable for carrying off large quanti- 
 ties of water and snow. A gable (Fig. 12) with a 
 sharp slant was necessary. Hence throughout north- 
 
 ern Europe the roofs were built much steeper than 
 they were in Italy and Greece, although in other 
 respects the northern houses resembled more or less 
 closely those of the older southern countries.
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 The pointed roof which was made necessary by 
 the climate of the north prepared the way for a new 
 style of building, the pointed or Gothic style. This 
 style began to appear in the twelfth century and by 
 the end of the thirteenth century that remarkable 
 
 FIG. 12. A DWELLING IN NORTHERN EUROPE. 
 
 century again the buildings of all northern 
 Europe were Gothic. The new style began with a 
 change in the arch. The Roman arch was a semi- 
 circle and was therefore described from one center. 
 The Gothic arch was formed by describing it from 
 two centers instead of one and was therefore a
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 pointed arch. As the pointed arch grew in favor 
 it became the fashion to shape other parts of the 
 building into points wherever it was possible to do 
 this. The rounding dome became a spire " point- 
 ing heavenward"; the windows and doors were 
 
 pointed and so 
 were the orna- 
 ments and dec- 
 orations. For 
 several centuries 
 buildings fairly 
 bristled with 
 p o i n t s (Fig. 
 13). The finest 
 example of 
 Gothic architec- 
 ture is the glori- 
 ous cathedral at 
 Cologne. 
 
 During the 
 thousand years 
 of the Dark 
 Ages (476- 
 1453) the 
 glories of the 
 civilization of 
 ancient Greece 
 FIG. 13.- POINTED STYLE. and Rome faded 
 
 Typical scheme of a fully developed French almost complete- 
 cathedral of the ijth century. (From Viol- , r u 
 let-le-Duc's " Diet, de 1' Architecture.") ] Y trom human 
 
 138
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 vision. Events of the sixteenth century brought 
 those glories again into view and Europe was 
 dazzled by them. Men everywhere became dis- 
 satisfied with the things around them. They longed 
 for ancient things. They read ancient authors, they 
 imitated ancient artists, they imbibed the wisdom of 
 ancient teachers. This was the period of the Re- 
 naissance, the time when the world was born anew 
 as it pleased men to think and say. The world of 
 the present died and the old world of Greece and 
 Rome was brought to life. Of course in the new 
 order of things architecture underwent a change. 
 // was born again; it experienced a renaissance. 
 The pointed style grew less pleasing to the builder's 
 eye, and wherever he could he placed in his building 
 something that was Greek or Roman, here an 
 arched doorway, there a Greek column. There 
 resulted from these changes a style that was neither 
 Gothic, Grecian nor Roman, but a mixture of all 
 these. This mixed style was named after the 
 period in which it arose. When you see a building 
 that strongly resembles the buildings of ancient 
 Greece and Rome and at the same time has features 
 which belong to other styles you may safely say that 
 the building belongs to the renaissance style. (Fig. 
 14.) The most noble and beautiful examples of 
 renaissance architecture are the church of St. Peter's 
 at Rome and the church of St. Paul at London. 
 
 We now pass over to America. About the time 
 the old world was born anew the new world was 
 '39
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 found. The houses of the first settlers in America 
 were of course rude and ugly but as the colonies 
 grew in population and wealth more expensive and 
 beautiful houses were built. As we should expect, 
 
 FIG. T4- A RENAISSANCE DWEU.INC,. 
 
 the colonists built their best houses in the style that 
 was then in fashion in the old world and that was 
 the renaissance style. They did not, however, copy 
 the old world architecture outright. They had dif- 
 140
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 ferent materials, a different climate and a different 
 class of workmen and they had to build according 
 to these changed conditions. The result was a style 
 of building that has been called colonial (Fig. 15). 
 
 FIG. 15. A COLONIAL MANSION. 
 
 The Cliveden Chew Mansion, where the Battle of German- 
 town was fought. 
 
 Colonial architecture was simply American renais- 
 sance. And that is what it is to-day. To say that 
 a house is in the colonial style is to say that it repre- 
 sents a certain architect's ideas as to what is best and 
 most beautiful in all styles. 
 
 The story of the house really ends with the period 
 of the renaissance. Since the sixteenth century 
 nothing really new in architecture has been dis- 
 covered and men have been wedded to no particular 
 style. When we want to build a house we choose 
 141
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 from all the styles and build according to our tastes. 
 Our story of the house, however, will not be complete 
 without a brief account of what has been called ele- 
 vator architecture. The high price of land in large 
 
 (Copyright 1911 by Underwood & Underwood, 'N. Y.) 
 FIG. l6. ELEVATOR ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The tower-like structure in the distance is a building more than 
 forty stories in height. 
 
 cities makes it necessary to run buildings up to a con- 
 siderable height if they are to be profitable. Now if 
 a building is more than five stories high it must have 
 an elevator, or lift, and if an elevator is to be put 
 in, the building might as well be run up nine or ten 
 stories. American business men learned this thirty 
 142
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 or forty years ago and began to build high, and they 
 have been building higher and higher ever since. 
 There are tall buildings in other countries but the 
 " sky-scraper " of twenty-five and thirty stories is 
 found only in the United States (Fig. 16). 
 
 Thus we may see in the house of to-day a long 
 and unbroken story. Where the roof is flat it is 
 Egyptian; where it slants gently in two directions 
 it is Greek; where it is steep or sharply pointed it is 
 Gothic. The columns are Greek, the rounded arches 
 are Roman. The whole is the result of the thou- 
 sands of years of effort which man has given to the 
 task of providing for himself a safe, convenient 
 and beautiful home.
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 WE are very proud in our day of our means of 
 transportation. If one wishes to send a 
 present to a friend a thousand miles away a few 
 cents spent in postage will take the article to its 
 destination. If for the sake of higher prices a fruit 
 grower wishes to sell his crops in a distant city, the 
 railroad people will haul it for him at a very small 
 cost. If you wish to visit a friend in town several 
 blocks away, there is the electric car ready to take 
 you for a nickel. If your friend is several hundred 
 miles away, the steam car will take you in a few 
 hours at a cost of not more than two or three cents 
 a mile. I am living in the country sixteen miles 
 from the city in which my work lies, and for nine 
 cents I am carried to the place of my business in less 
 than half-an-hour. What has been the history of 
 the inventions which make transportation so com- 
 fortable, rapid and cheap? Our subject divides 
 itself into two parts, transportation on land and 
 transportation on water or the story of the Carriage 
 and the story of the Boat. We will have the story 
 of the carriage first. v 
 
 Man's only carriage at first was of course his own 
 feet. When he wanted to go to any place he had to 
 144
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 take " Walker's hack," if a playful expression may 
 be pardoned. As a traveler on foot, man soon sur- 
 passed all other animals. He could walk down the 
 deer and wear out the horse. When it came to 
 carrying things from place to place, in the begin- 
 ning he had to rely upon his own limbs and muscles. 
 It was not long, however, before he learned that 
 there were good ways and bad ways of carrying 
 things, and he soon set about finding 
 the best way. We may believe that 
 he began by making a snug bundle 
 and carrying it on his shoulder. 
 Then he found that he could 
 carry a heavier burden upon 
 his back, and he invented a 
 pack or frame on which he 
 could carry things on his back 
 (Fig. i) after the manner of 
 one of our modern pack 
 peddlers. 
 
 In the course of time man 
 tamed one or more of the wild 
 beasts which roamed near him. 
 Then the burden was 
 shifted from the back 
 of a man to the back 
 of a beast. The first 
 beast of burden in 
 
 South America was 
 
 T .. . (From a Model in National Mu- 
 the llama; in India it seum.) 
 
 145
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 was the elephant; in 
 Arabia it was the camel 
 (Fig. 2). In Europe 
 and in parts of Asia and 
 in Egypt the horse first 
 became man's burden 
 bearer and the nations 
 which had the services 
 J \f i of this swift and strong 
 animal outstripped the 
 other nations of the 
 world. " Which is the 
 most useful of ani- 
 mals? " asked one Egyptian god of another. " The 
 horse," was the reply, " because the horse enables a 
 man to overtake and slay his enemy." 
 
 It is often easier to drag a thing along than it is 
 to carry it. This fact led to the invention of what 
 we may call the first and simplest form of carriage. 
 
 FIG. 2. A SHIP OF THE DESERT. 
 
 FIG. 3. A CART WITHOUT WHEELS. 
 
 (From a Model in the National Museum.) 
 I 4 6
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 This was the drag or travail (tra-vay'), a cart with- 
 out wheels (Fig. 3). Two long saplings were 'fas- 
 tened at the large end to the strap across the horse's 
 breast and the small end upon which the burden was 
 placed dragged upon the ground. Mr. Arthur 
 Mitchell in his delightful book, " The Past in the 
 Present," tells us that he saw carts of this kind in 
 actual use in the highlands of Scotland as late as 
 1864! An improvement upon the travail was the 
 sledge made of the forked limb of a tree (Fig. 4). 
 This primitive sledge was really a travail consisting 
 of one piece 
 
 FIG. 4. A PRIMITIVE SLEDGE. 
 
 (From a Model in National Museum.) 
 
 In many cases it is easier to roll a thing than it is 
 to drag it. This fact led to another step in the 
 development of the carriage; it led from the cart 
 without wheels to a cart with a wheel a most im- 
 portant step in the history of inventions. The first 
 wheeled cart was simply a log from each end of 
 which projected an axle (Fig. 5). The axle fitted 
 in the holes of a frame upon which the body of the 
 cart was placed and to which the horse or the ox was 
 attached. As the cart moved along, wheel (log and 
 axle) turned together. The very ancient method 
 of moving a load by rolling it along was in use in 
 the United States not so very long ago. As late
 
 STORIFS OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 as 1860 in some of the southern States hogsheads 
 of tobacco (Fig. 6) were rolled over country roads 
 in the manner just described and as late as 1880 the 
 fishermen of Nantucket used as a fish cart a vehicle 
 
 FIG. 5. THE FIRST CART. FIG. 6. HAULING TOBACCO. 
 
 (From a Model in National Museum.) 
 
 that had only a barrel for its wheel. (Fig. 7.) 
 The common wheel-barrow and the one-wheeled 
 carts which are still used in China and Japan had 
 their origin in the rolling log. 
 
 FIG. 7. A NANTUCKET FISH CART. 
 
 (From a Model in the National Museum.) 
 
 We are told by some writers that the rolling log 
 (the one-wheeled cart) was followed by the two- 
 wheeled cart, on which the wheels were the ends of a 
 log and the axle was the middle portion of the log 
 148
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 FIG. 8. A CART WITH WHEELS 
 AND AXLE IN ONE PIECE. 
 
 hewn down to a proper 
 
 size (Fig. 8). Here 
 
 wheels and axle turned 
 
 together precisely like a 
 
 modern car wheel. This 
 
 makes a very pretty 
 
 story but I am afraid 
 
 the solid two-wheeled 
 
 affair represented in 
 
 Figure 8 is only imaginary, and that in a true 
 
 account of the development of the cart it has 
 
 no place. The true beginning of the two-wheeled 
 
 cart may be learned from Figure 9. Here the 
 
 wheels are two very short logs through the center 
 
 of which are holes in which the round ends (axles) 
 
 of a piece of timber (the axle-tree) fit. When the 
 
 cart moves, the wheels turn upon the axle. The one- 
 
 r^S 
 
 FIG. 9. CART WITH A SOLID WHEEL. 
 149
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 wheeled cart had at first one log turning with the 
 axle; the two-wheeled cart at first had as its wheels 
 two very short logs turning on the axles. 
 
 The first two-wheeled carts were a great improve- 
 ment upon the single rolling log, yet they were ex- 
 ceedingly heavy and clumsy. The trouble was with 
 the wheel. This was very thick and with the ex- 
 ception of the hole in which the axle went it was 
 
 FIG. IO. CART WITH WHEEL PARTLY SOLID. 
 
 (From a Model in the National Museum.) 
 
 entirely solid. Wheelwrights at a very early date 
 saw that the problem was to make the wheel light 
 and at the same time to keep it strong. Little by lit- 
 tle this problem was solved. At first crescent- 
 shaped holes were made in the wheel (Fig. 10). 
 This made the wheel lighter, but did not weaken it. 
 In its next form the wheel was even less solid than 
 150
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 before. It now consisted of four curved pieces of 
 wood (Fig. n) held together by four spokes. In 
 this wheel there was a hub, but the spokes were not 
 
 FIG. II. WHEELS WITH SPOKES. 
 
 (From National Museum.) 
 
 inserted in it; they were fastened about it. In the 
 Egyptian chariot (Fig. 12) we find the wheel in the 
 
 FIG. 12. AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHARIOT SHOWING HUB, SPOKES, 
 FELLY AND RIB. 
 
 (From National Museum.) 
 
 last stage of its interesting and remarkable develop- 
 ment. Here the spokes, six in number, are in- 
 serted in the hub from which they radiate to the six
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 pieces of the felly or inner rim. Around the felly 
 is the outer rim or tire made of wood and fastened 
 to the felly with thongs. The wheel of to-day has 
 
 FIG. 13. WONDERFUL ONE HOSS SHAY. 
 
 (From National Museum.) 
 
 more iron in it, and has more spokes and is lighter 
 and stronger than the old Egyptian wheel, yet in its 
 main features it is made like it. 
 
 A light running two-wheeled carriage was used 
 by all the civilized nations of the ancient world. 
 Three thousand years ago in the great and wicked 
 city of Nineveh chariots raced up and down the 
 paved streets " jostling against one another in the 
 broad ways, with the crack of the whip, the rattle of 
 the wheel and the prancing of horses." The 
 chariot played an important part in the life of the 
 Greeks and Romans, in their racing contests and in 
 152
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 their wars, and throughout the Middle Ages it was 
 the only vehicle in general use in Europe. As time 
 passed it was of course made lighter and stronger 
 and better. The doctor's gig so charmingly de- 
 scribed by Holmes in his " Wonderful One Hoss 
 Shay " may be taken as an illustration of the full 
 development of the two-wheeled carriage (Fig. 13). 
 Bring the hind part of one Egyptian chariot op- 
 
 x^^^fnfe^x" 
 
 FIG. 14. AN ANCIENT ROMAN CHARIOT. 
 
 posite to the hind part of another, lash the two 
 chariots together, remove the tongue of one of the 
 chariots and you have made a chariot of four wheels 
 or a coach. The form of the most ancient of four- 
 wheeled carriages leads to the belief that the coach 
 was first made by joining together two two-wheeled 
 chariots in the way just described. The ancient 
 Egyptians had their four-wheeled chariots but only 
 their gods and their kings had the privilege of riding 
 153
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 in them. For centuries none but the great and the 
 powerful rode in coaches. The Roman chariot (Fig. 
 14), bad imitations of which we see nowadays in 
 circus processions, was used only in the splendid 
 triumphal processions which entered Rome after a 
 great victory. In the Middle Ages we get a glimpse 
 of a four-wheeled carriage now and then, but usually 
 the king or a queen is lounging in it (Fig. 15). 
 
 FIG. 15. A COACH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 The coach could not be generally used in Europe 
 in medieval times because the roads were so bad. 
 The excellent roads made by the Romans had not 
 been kept in good condition. Traveling had to be 
 done either on horseback or in the two-wheeled car- 
 riage. In 1550 there were but three coaches in 
 Paris and in London there was but one. In 1564, 
 however, we find Queen Elizabeth riding in a coach 
 (Fig. 1 6) on her way to see her lover, Lord 
 Leicester. Insert more spokes and lighter ones in 
 154
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 FIG. 16. QUEEN ELIZABETH'S COACH. 
 
 the wheels of this coach of the queen's, put on rub- 
 ber tires and mount the body on elliptical springs l 
 and we will have the coach of to-day. 
 
 1 About the year 1700 elliptical springs were invented, but they 
 did not find their way into general use until more than a hun- 
 dred years later. 
 
 155
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 Continued 
 
 IN the last chapter the story of the Carriage was 
 brought up to the reign of Queen Elizabeth of 
 England. In the century following Elizabeth's 
 reign a new and most remarkable step in the develop- 
 ment of the carriage was taken. You remember 
 that in the seventeenth century there was a great deal 
 of experimenting with steam (p. 58). Among other 
 experiments was one made by Sir Isaac Newton. 
 This great philosopher tried in 1680 to make a 
 
 steam-carriage, or lo- 
 ctunoth-r, as we call it. 
 Figure i shows the prin- 
 ciple upon which he 
 tried to make his car- 
 riagework. The steam 
 
 was to react against the 
 FIG. i. NEWTON'S STEAM CAR- ... ,. 
 
 WAGE, 1680. air ' ^ m .^ CaSC f 
 
 Hero's engine (p. 56) 
 
 and thus push the carriage along. Newton's experi- 
 ment was not satisfactory but the idea of a steam-car- 
 riage was now in men's heads and the hope of making 
 one continued to be cherished. In 1769 Cugnot, a 
 156 
 
 -^
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 French army officer, invented a steam-carriage of 
 three wheels (Fig. 2) but it was a very poor one. 
 It traveled only three or four miles an 
 hour, it could carry but three persons, and it had 
 to stop every ten minutes to get up steam. Cugnot, 
 however, deserves to be ranked among the great in- 
 ventors for he showed that a steam-engine could be 
 
 ' 
 
 FIG. 2. CUGNOT'S STEAM CARRIAGE, 1769. 
 
 attached to a carriage and could push it along. In 
 other words he showed that steam could be used for 
 transportation as well as for working pumps and 
 turning the wheels of factories. And that was just 
 what was needed most in the latter part of the eight- 
 eenth century. Man needed assistance in traveling; 
 he especially needed help in carrying things from 
 157
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 place to place. The steam-engine was keeping the 
 mines dry and making it possible to mine great 
 quantities of coal and was turning the wheels of 
 great factories where the spinning-jenny and the 
 new power loom (p. 119) were consuming enor- 
 mous quantities of cotton and wool. Now if the 
 steam-engine could also be made to carry the coal 
 and cotton and wool to the factory, and the man- 
 ufactured products from the factory to the market, 
 the industrial revolution would be complete in- 
 deed. 
 
 Inventors everywhere put their wits together to 
 construct an engine that would draw a load. The 
 great Watt tried to make one, but having failed, he 
 came to the conclusion that the steam-engine could 
 do good work only when standing still. Among 
 those who entered the contest was Richard Trevi- 
 thick, a Cornish miner, born in 1771. Trevithick 
 when a lad at school was able to work six examples 
 in arithmetic while his teacher worked one. He 
 proved to be as quick in mechanics as he was in 
 mathematics. He began his experiments with 
 steam when a mere boy, and as early as 1796 he 
 had built a steam-locomotive which would run on 
 a table. By 1801 he had constructed a steam-car- 
 riage (Fig. 7). Three years later (1804) Trevi- 
 thick exhibited a locomotive which carried ten tons 
 of iron, seventy men, and five wagons a distance of 
 nine and one-half miles at the rate of five miles an 
 hour. This was the first steam carriage that 
 158
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 actually performed useful work. The honor of in- 
 venting the first successful locomotive, therefore, be- 
 longs to Richard Trevithick, although he never re- 
 ceived the honor that was due him. 
 
 The honor went to George Stephenson, of Wylam, 
 near Newcastle, England. Stephenson's parents 
 were so poor that they could not afford to send him 
 to school long enough for him to learn to read and 
 write. In his eighteenth year, however, he attended 
 a night school and learned something of the common 
 branches. In his childhood Stephenson lived among 
 steam-engines. He began as an engine boy in a col- 
 liery and was soon promoted to the position of fire- 
 man. At an early age he was trying to build the 
 locomotive that the world needed so badly, one that 
 would do good work at a small cost. Trevithick's 
 locomotive was too expensive. Stephenson wanted 
 a locomotive that would pay its owner a profit. At 
 the age of thirty-three he had solved his problem. 
 In 1814 he exhibited a locomotive that would run 
 ten or twelve miles an hour and carry passengers 
 and freight cheaper than horses could carry them. 
 Eleven years later he was operating a railroad be- 
 tween Stockton and Darlington, England. The 
 steam carriage was now a success (Fig. 3). The 
 iron horse was soon transporting passengers and 
 freight in all the civilized countries of the world 
 (Fig. 4). Observe that the first passenger car was 
 simply the old coach joined to a locomotive. 
 
 The locomotive worked wonders in travel and in 
 159
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 carrying loads, yet men were not satisfied with it. 
 We never are satisfied with our means of transpor- 
 
 S.i.D.R. N|. .1 825. 
 
 FIG. 3. STEVENSON'S LOCOMOTIVE, 1828. 
 
 tation. No matter how comfortably or cheaply or 
 fast we may travel we always want something better. 
 
 FIG. 4. THE "BEST FRIEND." THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE BUILT FOR 
 ACTUAL SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In the latter part of the nineteenth century the great 
 
 cities of the world were becoming over-crowded. 
 
 1 60
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 FIG. 5. A TROLLEY CAR. 
 
 The people could not be carried from one part of a 
 city to another without great discomfort. The 
 street cars drawn by horses could not carry the 
 crowds and 
 the elevated 
 steam cars 
 were not satis- 
 factory. Wits 
 were set to 
 work to relieve 
 the situation 
 and about thirty years ago the electric car (Fig. 5) 
 was invented. Without horse or locomotive this 
 quick-moving car not only successfully handles 
 the crowds which move about the city but it also 
 relieves over-crowding by enabling thousands to reach 
 conveniently and cheaply their suburban homes. It 
 also does the work of the steam car and carries pas- 
 sengers long distances 
 from city to city. 
 
 A late development 
 in carriage making is 
 seen in the automobile. 
 As far back as the six- 
 teenth century a horse- 
 less carriage was invent- 
 ed (Fig. 6) and was 
 operated on the streets of a German city. But 
 here the power was furnished by human muscle. 
 The first real automobile (Fig. 7) was invented in 
 161 
 
 FIG. 6. A HORSELESS CARRIAGE OF 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 1 80 1, by the man who invented the first successful 
 locomotive. Trevithick's road locomotive for 
 that is what an automobile really is did not work 
 well because the roads upon which he tried it were 
 in very bad condition. Inventors after Trevithick 
 for a long time paid but little attention to the road 
 locomotive; they bestowed their best thought upon 
 
 FIG. 7. THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE. 
 
 the locomotive that was to be run upon rails the 
 railroad locomotive. In recent years, however, they 
 have been working on the so-called automobile and 
 they have already given us a horseless carriage that 
 can run on a railless road at a rate as great as that 
 of the fastest railroad locomotives. To what ex- 
 tent is this newest of carriages likely to be used? It 
 162
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 is already driving out the horse. Will it also 
 drive out the electric car and the railroad loco- 
 motive? Are we coming to the time when the rail- 
 
 FIG. 8. COOD-BY TO THE HORSE. 
 
 road will be no more and when all travel and all 
 hauling of freight will be done by carriages and 
 wagons without horses on roads without rails? The 
 answers to these questions can of course only be 
 guessed. 
 
 The last and latest form of the carriage is seen in 
 the flying-machine, the automobile of the air. In all 
 ages men have watched with envy the movements of 
 birds and have dreamed of flying-machines, but only 
 in modern times has man dared to take wings and 
 glide in bird-like fashion through the air. The first 
 actual flying by a human being was done by a French- 
 man named Bresnier, who, in 1675, constructed a 
 163
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 machine similar to that shown in the right hand pic- 
 ture at the top of Figure 9. Bresnier worked his 
 
 FIG. 9. SOME UNSUCCESSFUL FLYING MACHINES OF A HUNDRED 
 YEARS AGO. 
 
 wings with his feet and hands. Once he jumped 
 from a second story window and flew over the roof 
 of a cottage. From the days of Bresnier on to the 
 present time man has taxed his wits to the utmost 
 to conquer the air, and in his efforts to do this he 
 has invented almost every conceivable kind of ma- 
 chine. About the middle of the nineteenth century 
 164
 
 THE CARRIAGE 
 
 inventors began to apply steam to the flying-machine, 
 and it is said that in 1842 a man named Philips was 
 able, by the aid of revolving fans driven by steam, 
 to elevate a machine to a considerable distance and 
 fly across two fields. In 1896 Professor Langley, 
 with a flying-machine driven by a small steam-engine, 
 made three flights of about three-fourths of a mile 
 each over the Potomac River, near Washington. 
 
 FIG. 10. A SUCCESSFUL FLYING MACHINE OF TO-DAY. 
 
 This was the first time a flying-machine was propelled 
 a long distance by its own power; it was the first 
 aerial automobile. But the aerial steam carriage 
 was never a success ; the steam engine was too heavy. 
 In the early years of the twentieth century inventors 
 began to use the light gasoline engine to drive their 
 flying-machines and then real progress in the art of 
 flying began, and so great has been that progress 
 that the automobiles of the air are becoming rivals 
 of those on the land. 
 
 165
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 AT first, when a man wanted to cross a deep 
 stream, he was compelled to swim across. But 
 man at his best is a poor swimmer, and it was not 
 long before he invented a better method of traveling 
 on water. A log drifting in a stream furnished the 
 hint. By resting his body upon the log and plash- 
 ing with his hands and feet he found he could move 
 along faster and easier. Thus the log was the first 
 boat and the human arm was the first oar. Expe- 
 rience soon taught our primitive boatman to get on 
 top of the log and paddle along, using the limb of 
 
 a tree for an oar 
 (Fig. i). But the 
 round log would 
 turn with the least 
 provocation and its 
 passenger suffered 
 many unceremo- 
 nious duckings. So 
 the boatman made 
 his log flat on top. 
 It now floated better and did not turn over so easily. 
 Then the log was made hollow, either by burning 
 (Fig. 2) , or by means of a cutting instrument. Thus 
 166 
 
 FIG. I. THE FIRST BOAT.
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 1-1G. 2. THE INVENTION OK THE CANOE. 
 
 FIG 3 THE RAFT -^-SHOWING ALSO EARLY USE OK THE SAIL. 
 I6 7
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 the canoe was invented. Very often if the nature of 
 the tree permitted it, the log was stripped of its bark, 
 and this bark was used as a canoe. 
 
 The canoe was one of the earliest of boats, but 
 it is not in line with the later growth. The ancestry 
 of the modern boat begins with the log and is traced 
 through the raft rather than through the canoe. 
 By lashing together several logs it was found that 
 larger burdens could be carried. Therefore the boat 
 of a single log grew into one of several logs a 
 raft (Fig. 3). By the time man had learned to 
 make a raft he had learned something else: 
 he had learned to row his boat along by 
 pulling at an oar instead of pushing it along with a 
 paddle. But in order to 
 row there must be some- 
 thing against which the 
 oar may .rest; so the oar- 
 lock (Fig. 4) was invent- 
 ed. Rafts were used by 
 nearly all the nations of 
 antiquity. Herodotus, the 
 
 FIG. 4-A^IMITIVE OAR- fc^ Q J^^ ^ ^ 
 
 that they were in use in 
 
 ancient Chaldea. In Figure 3 we have a kind of 
 raft that may still be seen on some of the rivers of 
 South America. Here a most important step in 
 boat-building has been taken. A sail has been 
 hoisted and one of the forces of nature has been bid- 
 den to assist man in moving his boat along. 
 168
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 The raft was bound to develop into the large 
 boat. The central log was used as a keel and about 
 this was built a boat of the desired shape and size. 
 Stout timbers, called ribs, slanted from the keel, and 
 on the ribs were fastened planks running length- 
 wise with the vessel. To keep out the water the seams 
 between the planks were filled with pitch or wax. 
 
 FIG. 5- " THUS THE RAFT GREW INTO A LARGE, SPOON-SHAPED 
 VESSEL." 
 
 Thus the raft grew into a large spoon-shaped ves- 
 sel (Fig. 5). The early boat was usually propelled 
 by oars, although a single sail sometimes invoked 
 the assistance of the wind. It had no rudder and 
 no deck, and if there was an anchor it was only a 
 heavy stone. 
 
 In the early history of the boat there was no such 
 thing as a rudder. The oarsman had to steer his 
 169
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 craft as best he could. With the appearance of 
 larger boats, however, a steersman comes into view. 
 He steers by means of a paddle held over the stern 
 of the boat. Within historic times, probably about 
 the time of Homer (noo 
 B. c.), the rudder appears 
 as an oar with a broad blade 
 protruding through a hole 
 in the side of the boat well 
 to the stern (Fig. 6). 
 Throughout the whole 
 period of ancient history 
 boats were steered by rud- 
 ders of this kind. 
 
 The anchor came later 
 than the rudder. Of course 
 even in primitive times 
 there were methods of securing the vessel to the 
 ground under water but they were very crude. Some- 
 times a sack of sand was used as an anchor, some- 
 times a log of wood covered with lead was thrown 
 overboard to hold the boat 
 in its place. In Homer's 
 time the anchor was a bent 
 rod with a single fluke. 
 About 600 B. c. Anacharsis, 
 one of the seven wise men of Greece, gave a 
 practical turn to his wisdom and invented an an- 
 chor with two flukes (Fig. 7). The invention re- 
 170 
 
 FIG. 6. THE POSITION OF 
 THE RUDDER IN ANCIENT 
 TIMES. 
 
 FIG. 7. ANCIENT ANCHORS.
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 ceived the name of u anchor " from the name of the 
 inventor. 
 
 It was in the Mediterranean Sea that the boat had 
 its most rapid development. As early as we can 
 get a glimpse of that wonderful body of water it was 
 alive with boats (called galleys) that had well-laid 
 keels and lofty sides, and rudders, and sails. The 
 greatest of the earlier navigators were the Phoeni- 
 cians whose boats had traversed 5,000 years ago the 
 
 FIG. 8. A ROMAN GALLEY OF ONE TIER OF OARS, IN- 
 TRODUCING THE RUDDER. 
 
 whole course of the Mediterranean and had even 
 ventured beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. The an- 
 cient Greeks also were a great sea-going people, and 
 their merchantmen or trading boats visited every part 
 of the known world. But it was the Romans who 
 at last became masters of the ancient seas. The 
 Roman galley, therefore, may be taken as the repre- 
 sentative boat of ancient times. What kind of a boat 
 was the Roman galley? It was propelled chiefly by 
 oars, just as nearly all the boats of antiquity were. 
 171
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 Occasionally a sail was hoisted when the wind was 
 favorable but the main reliance was the rower's arm. 
 Men had not yet learned to use the sail to the best 
 advantage. The older galleys had one row of oars- 
 men (Fig. 8), but as the struggle for the mastery 
 of the sea became keener the boats were made larger 
 and more rowers were necessary. Galleys with two 
 and three, and even four rows of oarsmen were built 
 by the Roman navy. When there was more than 
 one row of oars the rowers sat on benches one 
 above another. The oarsmen were slaves or pris- 
 oners captured in war, and their life was most 
 wretched. 1 They were chained to the benches on 
 which they sat, and were compelled to row as long as 
 a spark of life was left. Sometimes they dipped their 
 oars to the music of the flute, but more often it 
 was to the crack of the lash. Figure 9 shows us how 
 the Roman galley looked when Rome was at the 
 height of her power (100 A. D.). Here is a vessel 
 about 400 feet long and about 50 feet across its 
 deck, a part of the boat, by the by, which was not 
 to be seen in the earlier galleys. The boat is a tri- 
 reme, that is, it has openings for three tiers of oars, 
 and it is propelled by several hundred oarsmen. For 
 steering purposes it has four stout paddles, two on 
 each side near the stern. Two masts instead of one 
 carry the sail which, considering the size of the boat, 
 would seem to be insufficient. This galley of the first 
 
 1 A spirited account of life on a Roman galley is found in Wal- 
 lace's " Ben Hur." 
 
 172
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 century of our era represents the full development of 
 the boat in ancient times. 
 
 After the downfall of Rome (476 A. D.) it was a 
 long time before there was any real progress in boat- 
 making. The glimpses we get now and then of ves- 
 
 FIG. 9. A ROMAN GALLEY WITH THREE BANKS OF OARS. 
 
 sels in the Middle Ages almost make us feel that 
 boat-building was going backward rather than for- 
 ward. But such was not the case. The ship in 
 which William of Normandy sailed (Fig. 10) when 
 he crossed over the Channel to give battle to Harold 
 (1066 A. D.) was not so impressive as a Roman 
 galley, yet it was, nevertheless, a better boat. In the 
 first place William's boat was a better sailer; it relied 
 more upon the force of the wind and less upon the 
 oar. In the second place, it could be steered better, 
 for the rudder had found its way to its proper place 
 and was worked by a tiller. Finally, the shape of 
 173
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 FIG. 10. THE SHIP IN WHICH WILLIAM THE CON- 
 QUEROR CROSSED THE CHANNEL IN IO66. 
 
 the Norman boat fitted it for fiercer battles with the 
 
 waves. 
 
 If we should pass from the English Channel to the 
 
 Adriatic we should 
 find that boat-mak- 
 ing had undergone 
 the same changes. 
 A Mediterranean 
 galley of the four- 
 teenth century 
 
 FIG. II. A MEDITERRANEAN GALLEY OP } g * * * ' SnOWS 
 
 THE i4TH CENTURY. f e w e r oars and 
 
 174
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 more sails. Instead 
 of three rows of 
 oars and two sails 
 as on the Roman 
 galley, t h e r'e are 
 three sails and one 
 row of oars. This 
 was the tendency of 
 the boat-builder in 
 the Middle Ages; 
 he crowded on the 
 sail and took off the 
 rowers. A war- 
 boat of the sixteenth 
 
 FIG. 13. A CHINESE COM- 
 PASS. AS THE CART MOVED 
 THE HUMAN FIGURE IN 
 FRONT ALWAYS POINTED 
 NORTH. 
 
 IG. 12. A WAR-BOAT OF THE l6TH 
 CENTURY, SHOWING THAT THE LAST 
 ROW OF OARS HAD DISAPPEARED. 
 
 century (Fig. 12) shows that 
 the last row of oarsmen has 
 disappeared. 
 
 About the middle of the 
 thirteenth century there be- 
 gan to appear on the decks 
 of vessels almost everywhere 
 in Europe, a little instrument 
 that is of the greatest im- 
 portance in the history of the 
 boat. This was the mariner's 
 compass. The use of the 
 magnetic needle was known 
 in China (Fig. 13) a thou- 
 sand years before it was 
 known to the Europeans, but
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 in this, as in many other instances, the Chinese did not 
 profit by their knowledge. Sailors have always sailed 
 at night by the North star; but before the use of the 
 compass was understood they could little more than 
 guess their way when the night was dark and the stars 
 could not be seen. With a mariner's needle on board 
 they can tell the direction they are going no matter 
 how dark the night. We can easily understand that 
 sailors prized very highly the discovery of the com- 
 pass. With the appearance of this faithful guide 
 they became bolder and bolder and were soon ven- 
 turing out upon the trackless expanse of the ocean. 
 It was the compass that led to the discovery of the 
 new world, for without it no sailor could have held 
 his course due west long enough to reach the Amer- 
 ican coast. 
 
 After men had learned to carry their burdens on 
 the broad back of the ocean, boat-building took 
 on new life. All the great nations of Europe wanted 
 a share in the new world that had just been found; 
 but no nation could hope to profit greatly by the dis- 
 covery of Columbus if its vessels were not swift and 
 strong. So there arose a grim contest for the mastery 
 of the Atlantic, just as in ancient times there had been 
 a struggle for the mastery of the Mediterranean. 
 Spain, France, Portugal, Holland and England all 
 joined in the battle. When we see the kind of boats 
 she sent out upon the oceans we are not surprised that 
 England won. Compare the heavy, angular galley of 
 the first century with the graceful ship of the sixteenth 
 176
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 century and we see at once the progress the boat 
 made in the Middle Ages (Fig. 14). 
 
 The log, the raft, the galley, the sailing-ship, these 
 were the steps in the development of the boat up to 
 the end of the seventeenth century. In the eight- 
 eenth century another step was taken. You re- 
 member that in that century inventors were every- 
 where trying to make a steam carriage. They were 
 
 at the same time trying to make a steam boat. Their 
 efforts to use steam to drive boats were rewarded with 
 success earlier than were their efforts to use it to draw 
 carriages. This was to be expected. Boat-build- 
 ing has always moved along faster than carriage- 
 building. Men were gliding about in well-built ca- 
 noes before they had even the clumsiest of carts. The 
 Londoners who gazed with admiration upon the 
 177
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 Great Harry as it sailed on the Thames, had never 
 seen as much as a lumbering coach. And so with 
 the steamboat; it had crossed the Atlantic before the 
 locomotive could carry passengers from one town to 
 the next. 
 
 France, England, Germany and America were all 
 eager to have the first steamboat. In this race 
 America won, although France and England came out 
 with their colors flying. As far back as 1663 the 
 Marquis of Worcester, of whom we have heard 
 before (p. 59), described a vessel that could be 
 moved by steam : " It roweth," he said, " it draw- 
 eth, it driveth (if needs be) to pass London bridge 
 against the stream at low water." It was one thing, 
 however, to describe a steamboat, and quite another 
 thing to make one. Worcester's steam-vessel existed 
 only in the imagination of the inventor. Denys 
 Papin, who did so much for the steam-engine, fitted 
 out a boat with revolving paddles which were turned 
 by horses. This was nothing new. The ancient 
 Roman galley was sometimes propelled by paddle- 
 wheels turned by horses or oxen. It is sometimes 
 claimed that Papin turned the paddle-wheels of 
 his boat by means of steam, but there are no grounds 
 for the claim. If France wants the honor of having 
 made the first steamboat she would do better to 
 turn from Papin and look to Marquis of Jouffroy of 
 Lyons. This nobleman, it is claimed, built a steam- 
 boat (Fig. 15) which made a successful trip on the 
 river Soane, in the year 1783, before a multitude of 
 178
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 witnesses. This claim may or may not be just. It 
 may be as the French say: the boat after the trial 
 trip may have been taken to pieces, the model may 
 have been lost and the French Revolution may have 
 swallowed up those who witnessed the trip. 
 
 FIG. IS- THE MARQUIS OF JOUFFROY's STEAMBOAT, 1783. 
 
 About the time the Frenchman is said to have 
 been experimenting with his steambo'at on the 
 Soane similar experiments were being tried in many 
 other places. In the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century the idea of a steam-propelled boat seemed to 
 be in the air. An English poet of the time was bold 
 enough to prophesy : 
 
 179
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 Soon shall thy arm, Unconquered Steam, afar 
 Drag the slow barge and draw the rapid car, 
 Or on wide, waving wings, expanded bear 
 The flying chariot through the fields of air. 
 
 For the most part the prophesy has been fulfilled, 
 although the steam flying-machine is not yet an ac- 
 complished fact. Among those who helped to make 
 good the words of the poet was James Rumsey, of 
 Sheppardtown, Virginia. Rumsey in 1786 propelled, 
 by means of steam, a boat on the Potomac River 
 moving at the rate of five miles an hour. It is almost 
 certain that this was the first boat ever drawn by 
 steam. How did Rumsey drive his boat? A piston 
 in a cylinder was worked by a steam-engine. When 
 the piston was raised it brought water in and when it 
 was pushed down it forced the water out behind and 
 the reaction of the jet pushed the boat along. A 
 remarkable revival of a very ancient idea ! Just as 
 Hero turned his globe by reaction, just as Newton 
 pushed the first steam carriage along by reaction, so 
 Rumsey pushed the first steamboat along by reaction. 
 If you will look on a map of the United States and 
 observe the vast network of waterways which come 
 to the different parts of the country you will under- 
 stand how important a subject steam navigation must 
 have been to the people of America in the latter part 
 of the eighteenth century. Here was a tract of land 
 containing millions upon millions of fertile acres, but 
 it lacked good roads, and without roads it could not 
 
 180
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 be developed. It was, however, traversed by thou- 
 sands of miles of excellent water-roads and it was 
 plain that if steamboats could be put upon these riv- 
 ers the gain would be incalculable. The most press- 
 ing need of the time, therefore, was a steamboat. 
 No one saw this more clearly than John Fitch. This 
 talented but eccentric man served his country in the 
 Revolution, and after the war was over roamed 
 hither and thither for several years as a soldier of 
 fortune. About 1785 he went to Philadelphia with 
 a plan for a steamboat. He organized a com- 
 pany, and secured enough money to enable him to 
 carry out his plans. His boat was ready by August, 
 1787, and he made his trial trip in Philadelphia when 
 the Constitutional Convention was in session. Many 
 of the members of that distinguished body went down 
 to the river to see how the new invention worked. It 
 worked fairly well, but did not arouse much en- 
 thusiasm. Its speed was only three or four miles 
 an hour and its movement was exceedingly awkward. 
 It was pushed along by two sets of oars, one set en- 
 tering into the water as the other came out. The 
 steam rowboat of 1787 proved at least to be a fail- 
 ure, and was abandoned as worthless. Fitch after- 
 ward built another steamboat, but it also met with 
 accident and came to naught. Heartbroken by his 
 many failures the poor fellow at last ended his life 
 with his own hand. He deserved a better fate, for 
 his experiments taught the world a great deal about 
 the steamboat. 
 
 181
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 While Rumsey and Fitch were making their boats 
 in America, European inventors were not idle. On 
 the contrary they were so very active that they al- 
 most won the honor of making the first successful 
 boat. One of these, William Symington, an English- 
 man, built a boat that may, with much justice, be 
 called the first practical steamboat that was ever 
 launched. This was the Charlotte Dundas (Fig. 
 
 . 1 6) which made its 
 
 ;t r i a 1 trip on the 
 Clyde and Firth 
 j j. M x*,-> Canal in 1802. On 
 
 the Charlotte was a 
 
 i^jJHHHH paddle-wheel i n - 
 
 stead of Fitch's two 
 
 F1G - I6 '~ THE i A 2 RLOTTE DUNDAS> sets of paddles. The 
 
 wheel was placed at 
 
 the rear of the boat and was drawn by means 
 of a crank which was turned by a rod attached 
 to the piston-rod. Watt and his co-workers, a few 
 years before, had shown how the steam-engine could 
 be made to turn a wheel and Symington in the con- 
 struction of his boat put this principle to good use. 
 The Charlotte did so well that the Duke of Bridge- 
 water ordered eight more boats like her to be built 
 for use on the canal. Symington was elated for he 
 thought he had at last made a successful steamboat, 
 that is, a steamboat that would give to its owner a 
 profit; but he was doomed to disappointment for the 
 owners of the canal refused to allow steamboats to be 
 182
 
 THE BOAT 
 
 employed upon it, and worse than this the duke soon 
 died and the inventor's financial support was gone. 
 The Charlotte was taken off the canal and laid in a 
 creek where she fell to pieces. The really successful 
 steamboat had not yet been built. 
 
 It was to be built first where it was needed most, 
 and that was in America. It was built by a man who 
 kept his eyes on Rumsey and Fitch and Symington, 
 and made the best of what he saw. As all the world 
 knows, this was Robert Fulton. In August of 1807 
 Fulton's steam- 
 boat the Cler- 
 mont ( Fig. 
 i 7 ) made a 
 trip on the 
 Hudson River 
 from New 
 York to Al- 
 bany, a distance of 150 miles, in thirty-two hours, and 
 returned in thirty hours. Fulton advertised for pas- 
 sengers, and his boat was soon crowded. " The 
 Clermont," says an English writer, " was the steam- 
 boat that commenced and continued to run for practi- 
 cal purposes, and for the remuneration of her own- 
 ers." Here was the boat that was wanted one 
 that was financially profitable. 
 
 The paddle-wheels of the Clermont were on the 
 
 sides of the boat about midship. As the wheel 
 
 turned, about half of it was in the water and about 
 
 half was out. There were engineers, even in Ful- 
 
 183 
 
 FIG. 17. FULTON'S STEAMBOAT, CLERMONT.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 ton's day who did not believe the wheels ought to 
 be on the sides of the boat. Look at waterfowl, 
 they said, look at the graceful swan; its feet do not 
 work at its sides, half under the water and half out. 
 Every animal that swims propels itself from behind, 
 and its propellers are entirely under the water. So, 
 thought these engineers, the paddle-wheel of a boat 
 should be placed behind, and should be entirely cov- 
 ered by the water. John Stevens, an engineer of 
 Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1805 built a steamboat ac- 
 
 ne. l8. THE BOAT OF STEVENS. 
 
 cording to this notion (Fig. 18). A close inspection 
 of the wheel of the boat would show that it is spiral- 
 or screw-like in shape. Stevens' boat made a trial 
 trip on the Hudson and worked well; but after Ful- 
 ton's great success the little steamer with its spiral- 
 shaped wheel in the rear was soon forgotten. The 
 idea of a screw-propeller, however, was not lost. 
 It was taken up by John Ericsson, a Swedish en- 
 gineer, who, in 1839, built, in an English ship- 
 yard for an American captain, the first screw- 
 184
 
 THE BOAT
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 propeller that crossed the Atlantic the Robert 
 F. Stockton. This was the last step in the de- 
 velopment of the boat. Since 1839 there has been 
 marvelous progress in ship-building, but the progress 
 has consisted in improving upon the invention of Er- 
 icsson rather than in making new discoveries. With 
 the screw-propeller in its present form we may close 
 our story of the boat. The homely log propelled by 
 rude paddles has become the magnificent floating pal- 
 ace. 
 
 186
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 TIC-TAC! tic-tac! go the wheels of time. We 
 cannot stop them; they will not stop them- 
 selves." Time passing is life passing and the meas- 
 urement of time is the measurement of life itself. 
 How important then that our chronometers, or time 
 measures, be accurate and faithful! It is said that a 
 slight error in a general's watch caused the over- 
 throw of Napoleon at Waterloo and thus changed the 
 history of the world. Because of its great impor- 
 tance the measurement of time has always been a 
 subject of deep human interest and the story of the 
 clock begins with the history of primeval man. 
 
 The larger periods of time are measured by the 
 motion of the heavenly bodies. The year and the 
 four seasons are marked off by the motion of the 
 earth in its long journey around the sun; the months 
 and the weeks are told by the changing moon; sunrise 
 and sunset announce the coming and the going of day. 
 The year and the seasons and the day were measured 
 for primeval man by the great clock in the heavens, 
 but how were smaller periods of time to be measured? 
 How was the passing of fractional parts of a day, an 
 hour or a minute or a second to be noted? An egg 
 was to be boiled; how could the cook tell when it had 
 187
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 been in the water long enough? A man out hunting 
 wished to get back to his family before dark: how 
 was he to tell when it was time to start homeward? 
 
 Plainly, the measurement of small portions of 
 time was a very practical problem from the be- 
 ginning. The first attempt to solve the problem 
 consisted in observing shadows cast by the sun. The 
 changing shadow of the human form was doubtless 
 the first clock. As the shadow grew shorter the ob- 
 server knew that noon was approaching; when he 
 could reach out one foot 
 and step on the shadow of 
 his head he knew it was 
 time for dinner; when his 
 shadow began to lengthen 
 he knew that evening was 
 coming on. Observations 
 of this kind led to the 
 shadow clock or sun-dial 
 (Fig. i). You can make 
 one for yourself. On a per- 
 fectly level surface exposed 
 all day to the sun, place in 
 an upright position (Fig. 
 i) a stick about three feet long, and trace on 
 the surface the shadows as they appear at different 
 times of the day. A little study will enable you to 
 use the shadows for telling the time. Sun-dials have 
 been used from the beginning of time and they have 
 not yet passed out of use. They may still be seen in 
 188 
 
 I. A PRIMITIVE 
 DIAL.
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 a few public places (Fig. 2), but they are retained 
 rather as curiosities than as real timekeepers. For 
 the sun-dial is not a good timekeeper for three rea- 
 sons : (i) it will not tell the time at night; (2) it 
 fails in the daytime when the sun is not shining; (3) 
 it can never be used inside of a house. 
 
 The sun-dial can hardly be called an invention; 
 it is rather an observation. There were, however, 
 inventions for measur- mmm _^_^_^____ 
 ing time in the earliest 
 period of man's history. 
 Among the oldest of 
 these was the fire-clock, 
 which measured time by 
 the burning away of a 
 stick or a candle. The 
 Pacific islanders still use 
 a clock of this kind. 
 " On the midrib of the 
 long palm-leaf they skewer a number of the oily 
 nuts of the candle-nut-tree and light the upper one." 
 As the nuts burn off, one after another, they mark 
 the passage of equal portions of time. Here is a 
 clock that can be used at night as well as in the day- 
 time, in the house as well as out of doors. Mr. 
 Walter Hough tells us that Chinese messengers who 
 have but a short period to sleep place a lighted 
 piece of joss-stick between their toes when they go to 
 bed. The burning stick serves both as a timepiece 
 and as an alarm-clock. 
 
 189 
 
 FIG. 2. A MODERN SUN-DIAL.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 Fire-clocks of one kind or another have been used 
 among primitive people in nearly all parts of the 
 globe, and their use has continued far into civilized 
 times. Alfred the Great (900 A. D.) is said to have 
 measured time in the following way: "He pro- 
 cured as much wax as weighed seventy-two penny- 
 weights, which he commanded to be made into six 
 candles, each twelve inches in length with the divi- 
 sions of inches distinctly marked upon it. These 
 being lighted one after another, regularly burnt four 
 hours each, at the rate of an inch for every twenty 
 minutes. Thus the six candles lasted twenty-four 
 hours." 1 
 
 We all remember Irving's account of time-measure- 
 ment in early New York: " The first settlers did not 
 regulate their time by hours, but pipes, in the same 
 manner as they measure distance in Holland at this 
 very time; an admirably exact measurement, as the 
 pipe in the mouth of a true-born Dutchman is never 
 liable to those accidents and irregularities that are 
 continually putting our clocks out of order." This, 
 of course, is not serious, yet it is an account of a kind 
 of fire-clock that has been widely used. Even to-day 
 the Koreans reckon time by the number of pipes 
 smoked. 
 
 If we could step on board a Malay proa we should 
 see floating in a bucket of water a cocoanut shell 
 having a small perforation through which the water 
 by slow degrees finds its way into the interior. This 
 
 1 Wood, " Curiosities of Clocks and Watches." 
 190
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 orifice is so perforated that the shell will fill and sink 
 in an hour, when the man on watch calls the time and 
 sets it to float again. This sinking cocoanut shell, 
 the first form of the water-clock, is the clock from 
 which has been developed the timepiece of to-day. 
 With it, therefore, the story of the clock really be- 
 gins. In Northern India the cocoanut shell is re- 
 placed by a copper bowl r . 
 
 (Fig- 3)- At tne m - 
 ment the sinking occurs 
 the attendant announces 
 the hour by striking 
 upon the bowl. 
 
 The second step in 
 the development of the 
 water-clock was made 
 in China several thou- 
 sand years ago. In the 
 earlier Chinese clock 
 
 the water, instead of finding its way into the vessel 
 from the outside, was placed inside and allowed 
 to trickle out through a hole in the bottom and 
 fall into a vessel below. In the lower vessel was 
 a float which rose with the water. To the 
 float was attached an indicator which pointed 
 out the hours as the water rose. By this ar- 
 rangement, when the upper vessel was full, the 
 water, by reason of greater pressure, ran out faster 
 at first than at any other time. The indicator, there- 
 fore, at first rose faster than it ought, and after a 
 191 
 
 FIG. 3. AN EARLY FORM OF THE 
 WATER-CLOCK.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 while did not rise as fast as it ought to. Alter 
 centuries of experience with the two-vessel arrange- 
 ment, a third vessel was brought upon the scene. 
 This was placed above the upper vessel, which now 
 became the middle vessel. As fast as water flowed 
 
 from the middle 
 vessel it was replac- 
 ed by a stream flow- 
 i n g from the one 
 above it. The depth 
 of the water in the 
 middle vessel did 
 not change, and the 
 water flowed into 
 the lowest vessel at 
 a uniform rate. 
 Finally a fourth ves- 
 sel was brought into 
 use. The Chinese 
 water-clock shown 
 in (Fig. 4) has been 
 running in the city 
 of Canton for near- 
 ly six hundred years. 
 Every afternoon at five, since 1321, the lowest jar 
 has been emptied into the uppermost one and the 
 clock thus wound up for another day. 
 
 To follow the further development of the water- 
 clock we must pass from China to Greece. In their 
 early history the Greeks had nothing better than the 
 192 
 
 FIG. 4. CHINESE WATER-CLOCK AT 
 CANTON.
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 sun-dial with which to measure time. About the 
 middle of the fifth century B. C. there arose at Athens 
 a need for a better timepiece. In 
 the public assembly the orators were 
 consuming too much time, and in 
 the courts of law the speeches of 
 the lawyers were too long. It was 
 a common thing for a lawyer to pj& 5 _ AN ARLy 
 harangue his audience for seven or GREEK CLEPSYDRA. 
 eight hours. To save the city from being talked to 
 death a time-check of some kind became necessary. 
 The sun-dial would not answer, for the sun did not 
 always shine, even in sunny Greece; so the idea of 
 the water-clock was borrowed. A certain amount 
 of water was placed in an amphora (urn), in the 
 bottom of which was a small hole through which the 
 water might slowly flow (Fig. 5). When the am- 
 phora was empty the speaker had to stop talking. 
 The Greeks called the water-clock a clepsydra, which 
 means " the water steals away." The orator whose 
 time was limited by a certain amount of water would 
 keep his eye on the clepsydra, just as a speaker in our 
 time keeps his eye on the clock, and if he were inter- 
 rupted he would shout to the attendant, " You there, 
 stop the water," or would say to the one who inter- 
 rupted him, " Remember, sir, you are in my water." 
 The story goes that upon one occasion the speaker 
 stopped every now and then to take a drink; the 
 orator's speech, it seems, was as dry as his throat, and 
 a bystander cried out : " Drink out of the clepsydra, 
 13 193
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 and then you will give pleasure both to yourself and 
 to your audience." 
 
 At first the Greeks used a simple form of the 
 clepsydra, but they gradually adopted the improve- 
 ments made by the Chinese, and finally added others. 
 The great Plato is said to have turned his attention 
 to commonplace things long enough to invent a clep- 
 sydra that would announce the hour by playing 
 the flute. However this may have 
 been, there was in use in the 
 Greek world, about 300 B. c., a 
 clepsydra something like the one 
 shown in Fig. 6. This begins to 
 look something like a clock. As 
 the water drops into the cylinder 
 E the float F rises and turns G, 
 which carries the hour hand 
 around. Inside of the funnel A 
 FIG. 6. AN IMPROVED j s a cone # wn i c h can be raised 
 
 GREEK CLEPSYDRA. 
 
 or lowered by the bar D. In this 
 way the dropping of the water is regulated. 
 Water runs to the funnel through //, and when 
 the funnel is full the superfluous water runs off 
 through the pipe /, and thus the depth of the 
 water in the funnel remains the same and the 
 pressure does not change. Notice that when the 
 hand in this old clock has indicated twelve hours 
 it begins to count over again, just as it does on our 
 clocks to-day. How easily it would have been to 
 have continued the numbers on to twenty-four, as 
 194
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 they do in Italy, and on the railroads in parts of 
 Canada, to-day. 
 
 If we pass from Greece to Rome, our usual route 
 when we are tracing a feature of our civilization, we 
 find that the Romans were slow to introduce new 
 methods of timekeeping. The first public sun-dial 
 in Rome was constructed about 200 B. c., an event 
 which the poet Plautus bewailed : 
 
 Confound the man who first found out 
 
 How to distinguish hours! Confound them, too 
 
 Who in this place set up a sun-dial 
 
 To cut and hack my days so wretchedly 
 
 Into small portions! When I was a boy 
 
 My stomach was my sun-dial, one more sure, 
 
 Truer, and more exact than any of them, 
 
 This dial told me when 't was the proper time 
 
 To go to dinner. 
 
 The water-clock was brought into Rome a little 
 later than the sun-dial, and was used as a time-check 
 upon speakers in the law courts, just as it had been 
 in Athens. When the Romans first began to use 
 the clepsydra it was already a very good clock. 
 Whether it received any great improvements at their 
 hands is not certain. Improvements must have been 
 made somewhere, for early in the Middle Ages we 
 find clepsydras in forms more highly developed than 
 they were in ancient times. In the ninth century the 
 Emperor Charlemagne received as gift from the 
 King of Persia a most interesting timepiece which 
 195
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 was worked by water. " The dial was composed of 
 twelve small doors which represented the divisions 
 of the hours; each door opened at the hour it was 
 intended to represent, and out of it came the same 
 number of little balls, which fell, one by one at equal 
 distances of time, on a brass drum. It might be 
 told by the eye what hour it was by the number of 
 doors that were open; and by the 
 ear by the number of balls that fell. 
 When it was twelve o'clock, twelve 
 horsemen in miniature issued forth 
 at the same time, and, marching 
 round the dial, shut all the doors." 
 Less wonderful than the clock of the 
 emperor, but more useful as an ob- 
 ject of study, is the medieval clepsy- 
 dra shown in Figure 7. This looks 
 more than ever like the clock we are 
 accustomed to see. It has weights 
 as well as wheels. As the float A 
 rises with the water it allows the 
 FIG. 7. A MEDIE- we ight C to descend and turns the 
 
 VAL CLEPSYDRA. . e . 
 
 spindle B on the end of which 
 is the hand which marks the hours. Notice care- 
 fully that this is partly a water-clock and partly a 
 weight-clock. The weight in its descent turns the 
 spindle; the water regulates the rate at which the 
 weight may descend. 
 
 The water-clock just described led easily and di- 
 rectly to the weight-clock. Clockmakers in the Mid- 
 196
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 die Ages for centuries tried with more or less 
 success to make clocks that would run by means of 
 weights. In 1370, Henry De Vick, a German, 
 succeeded in solving the 
 problem. De Vick was 
 brought to Paris to make 
 a clock for the tower of 
 the king's palace, and Ke 
 made one that has be- 
 come famous. In a some- 
 what improved form it 
 can still be seen in Paris 
 in the Palais de Justice. 
 Let us remove the face of 
 this celebrated timepiece 
 and take a look at its 
 works (Fig. 8). It had 
 a striking part, and a 
 timekeeping part, each 
 distinct from the other. 
 The figure shows only the 
 timekeeping part. The 
 weight (A), of 500 
 pounds, is wound up by a 
 crank (the key) at P. O is the hour-hand. 
 
 FIG. 8. DE VICK'S CLOCK. THE 
 FIRST WEIGHT CLOCK. (l37O.) 
 
 If A 
 
 is allowed to descend, you can easily see how the 
 whole system of wheels will be moved and that 
 very rapidly. But if something does not prevent, A 
 will descend faster and faster, the hour-hand will run 
 faster and faster and the clock will run down at once. 
 197
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 If the clock is to run at a unifrom rate and for any 
 length of time, the power of the weight must escape 
 gradually. In the clepsydra (Fig. i) the descent of 
 the weight was controlled by the size of the stream 
 of flowing water. De Vick invented a substitute for 
 the stream of flowing water. Fasten your attention 
 upon the workings of the saw-toothed wheel // and 
 the upright post K, which moves on the pivots / and 
 k, and you may learn what he did. Fixed to the 
 upper part of the post K is a beam or balance LL, 
 at the ends of \vhich are two small weights m and 
 m, and projecting from the post in different direc- 
 tions are two pallets or lips i and h. Now, as the 
 top of the wheel // turns toward you, one of its 
 teeth catches the pallet i and turns the post A' a part 
 of the way round toward you. Just as the tooth 
 escapes from i a tooth at the bottom of // (moving 
 from you) catches the pallet h and checks the re- 
 volving post and turns it from you. Thus as // 
 turns, it gives a to-and-fro motion to the post K and, 
 consequently, a to-and-fro motion to the balance LL. 
 II is called the escapement because the power of the 
 descending weight gradually escapes from its teeth. 
 In the clepsydra the trickling of water regulated the 
 descent of the weight; in De Vick's clock the trickling 
 of power or force from the escapement regulated the 
 descent of the weight. The invention of this escape- 
 ment is the greatest event in the history of the clock. 
 The king was much pleased with De Vick's in- 
 vention. He gave the clockmaker three shillings a 
 198
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 day, and allowed him to sleep in the clock tower; a 
 scanty reward indeed for one who had done so much 
 for the world, for De Vick's invention led rapidly 
 to the excellent timepieces of to-day, to both our 
 watches and our clocks. After the appearance of 
 the weight-clock, the water-clock gradually fell into 
 disuse, and all the ingenuity of the clockmaker was 
 bestowed upon weights and wheels and escapements 
 and balances. A cen- 
 tury of experimenting 
 resulted in a clock with- 
 out a weight (Fig. 9). 
 In this timekeeper you 
 recognize the begin- 
 nings of the modern 
 watch. The uncoiling FIG. 9. A CLOCK WITHOUT 
 
 of a spring drove the 
 
 machinery. Instead of the balancing beam with its 
 weights as in De Vick's clock, a balance wheel is 
 used. The escapement is the same as in the first 
 weight-clock. The busy and delicately-hung little 
 balance wheel in your watch is a growth from 
 De Vick's clumsy balance beam. The spring-clock 
 would run in any position. Because it could be car- 
 ried about it led almost at once to the watch. Many 
 places claim the distinction of having made the first 
 watch, but it seems that the honor belongs to the 
 city of Niirenburg. " Niirenburg eggs," as the first 
 portable clocks were called, were made as early as 
 1470. The first watches were large, uncouth affairs, 
 199
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 FIG. 10. A WATCH 
 OF THE l6TH 
 CENTURY. 
 
 resembling small table clocks but by the end of the 
 sixteenth century small watches with works of brass 
 and cases of gold or silver were 
 manufactured (Fig. 10). 
 
 The last important step in the 
 development of the clock was 
 taken when the pendulum was 
 brought into use. The history of 
 the pendulum will always include 
 a story told by Galileo. This 
 great astronomer, the story runs, 
 while worshiping in the cathe- 
 dral at Pisa one day, found the service dull, and 
 began to observe the swinging of the lamps which 
 were suspended from the ceiling. Using his pulse 
 as a timekeeper he learned that where the chains were 
 of the same length the lamp swayed to and fro in 
 equal length of time, whether 
 they traveled through a short 
 space or a long space. This ob- 
 servation set the philosopher to 
 experimenting with pendulums 
 of different lengths. Among 
 the many things he learned one 
 of the most important was this: 
 a pendulum thirty-nine inches in 
 length will make one vibration in 
 just one second of time. Now, 
 if the pendulum could only be 
 kept swinging and its vibrations 
 200 
 
 FIG. 1 1. GALILEO S 
 PENDULUM. (1650.)
 
 THE CLOCK 
 
 counted it would serve as a clock. Galileo, of 
 course, saw this, and he caused to be made a machine 
 for keeping the pendulum in motion (Fig. n), but 
 he did not make a clock; he did not connect his 
 pendulum with the works 
 of a clock. This, how- 
 ever, was done about the 
 middle of the seventeenth 
 century, although it is 
 somewhat difficult to tell 
 who was the first to do it. 
 The honor is claimed by 
 an Englishman, a French- 
 man, and a Dutchman. 
 The truth is, clockmak- 
 ers throughout Europe 
 were trying at the same 
 time to make the best of 
 the discoveries of Gali- 
 leo, and several of them 
 about the same time con- 
 structed clocks with pen- 
 dulums. The one who 
 seems to have succeeded 
 first was Christian Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, 
 who, in 1656, constructed a clock, the motions of 
 which were regulated by the swinging of a 
 pendulum (Fig. 12). The weight was attached 
 to a cord passing over a pulley and gave motion to 
 all the wheels, as in De Vick's clock. Like De 
 201 
 
 FIG. 12. THE FIRST PENDULUM 
 CLOCK. (1656.)
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 Vick's clock also Huygens's clock had its escapement 
 wheel acting upon two pallets. In the Dutchman's 
 clock, however, the escapement, instead of turning a 
 balance beam to and fro, acted upon the pendulum, 
 giving it enough motion to keep it from stopping. 
 
 We need not carry our story further than the in- 
 vention of Huygens. Timepieces are cheaper and 
 better made and more accurate than they were two 
 hundred years ago, but no really important discovery 
 has been made since the pendulum was introduced. 
 
 202
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 WHAT is a book? It is an invention by 
 means of which thought is recorded, and 
 carried about in the world, and handed down from 
 one age to another. Almost as soon as men began 
 to think they began to make books and they will 
 probably continue to make them as long as they con- 
 tinue to think. The story of the Book, therefore, 
 takes us back to the very beginning of human exist- 
 ence. 
 
 At first thought was recorded and preserved by 
 tradition. An account of a nation's deeds, its laws, 
 the precepts of its religion were stamped, printed, on 
 the memory of persons specially trained to memorize 
 these things and hand them down by word of mouth 
 from generation to generation (Fig. i). These 
 persons were usually priests, who underwent long 
 years of daily and hourly training in memorizing 
 what was to be handed down. The Sanskrit Vedas, 
 the sacked scripture of the Hindoos, were for many 
 centuries transmitted by tradition, and it is said it 
 took forty years to memorize them. It is a wonder 
 it did not take longer, for the Vedas make a volume 
 as large as our Bible. It is believed that primitive 
 people everywhere first adopted the method of tra- 
 203
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 dition to record and preserve the thought which they 
 did not wish to perish. We may say, then, that the 
 
 FIG. I. TRADITION. 
 
 A Mural Decoration in the Library of Congress. 
 
 first book was written on the tablet of the human 
 memory. 
 
 The first step in the growth of the book was taken 
 when memory aids were invented. Sometimes we 
 tie a knot in a handkerchief to help us to remember 
 something. Now, it was just by tying knots that 
 primitive man first lent assistance to the memory. 
 The first material book was doubtless a series of 
 knots well represented by the quipu (Fig. 2) of the 
 ancient Peruvians. This curious-looking book was 
 written (tied) by one known as the officer of the 
 knots. It contains an account of the strength of the 
 Peruvian army, although it is confessed that its exact 
 meaning cannot be made out. It was not intended to 
 204
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 be read by any one who was not a keeper of the knots. 
 Books made of knots were used by nearly all the 
 ancient peoples of South America and by some of 
 those of Asia. Akin to the knotted cord is the 
 notched stick, which is still used in Australia by the 
 savages to assist the memory of one who has a mes- 
 sage to carry. Figure 3 shows a variety of such 
 message-sticks. The lowest one a crooked branch 
 of a tree contains an invitation to a dancing party. 
 The notches are read by the messenger. The 
 notched stick as an aid to memory is not confined 
 to savage races. Many a highly civilized baker has 
 
 FIG. 2. THE QUIPU OF FIG. 3. MESSAGE-STICKS. 
 
 THE PERUVIANS. 
 
 kept his accounts by making notches in sticks and so 
 has many a modern dairyman, as he has delivered 
 milk from door to door. 
 
 Memory aids were followed by picture-writing. 
 To express thought by means of pictures is an in- 
 stinct shared alike by the lowest savage and the most 
 enlightened people. All over the earth we find ex- 
 205
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 amples of early picture-writing. A beloved chief 
 had died, a fierce battle had been fought, an exciting 
 chase had occurred : promptly the event was pictured 
 on a stone or on the skin of some animal. Pages 
 might be filled with illustrations of these primitive 
 picture-books, but we must be 
 content with a single specimen 
 (Fig. 4). This was found 
 painted on a rock in Califor- 
 nia : " We selected this as a 
 camming place, but we have 
 found nothing'' say the hu- 
 man figures /, g, h, i. The 
 upturned palms say plainly, 
 
 "nothing, nothing." "One of our comrades (d) 
 has died of starvation," say the three lank figures 
 at c pointing to their own lean bodies. " We deeply 
 mourn his loss," says the sorrow-stricken a. " We 
 have gone northward," says ;', his distinguished arm 
 extended to the north. 
 
 Practice in picture-making was bound to lead to 
 shorter methods of expressing ideas. It was soon 
 found that reduced pictures, or picture-signs, would 
 suffice to express ideas. Thus, if the idea of sorrow 
 was to be expressed it was not necessary to draw an 
 elaborate picture of a sorrowful looking man like a 
 in Figure 4; a weeping eye would express the idea 
 just as well. Instead of numerous figures (e, f, g, 
 h, i) weeping and saying, u nothing here," a single 
 pair of empty palms would say the same thing just 
 206
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 as clearly. In this way a pair of clasped hands 
 came to mean "friendship"; two trees meant "a 
 forest " ; a calf running toward water meant " thirst." 
 These picture-signs, of course, assumed the form in 
 which they could be most easily and rapidly drawn. 
 The weeping eye became ff^* ; the pair of ex- 
 tended palms J\ ; the forest T T ; thirst '^r' 
 
 j ^ I I /VWVA 
 
 A simple picture of this kind became a fixed con- 
 ventional sign for certain ideas; it was always drawn 
 in the same way and it always stood for the same 
 idea. 
 
 Picture-signs (ideographs) followed picture-writ- 
 ing in almost every country where the people were 
 progressive. China was writing its books with 
 picture-signs many thousands of years ago, and it is 
 writing them in the same clumsy way still. Even in 
 highly civilized countries picture-signs have not been 
 entirely abandoned. Examine the advertising page 
 of a newspaper or observe the business signs on the 
 street and you will find picture-signs pictures that 
 are always made in the same way and that always 
 stand for the same thing. 
 
 Each of the great nations of antiquity had its own 
 peculiar system of writing, but the system that should 
 interest us most is that of ancient Egypt, for it is to 
 ancient Egypt that you must look for the origin of 
 the book that is in your hands. The book in Egypt 
 passed through the stages of tradition, memory aids, 
 picture-writing and picture-signs (ideographs) ; then 
 207
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 it passed into the alphabetic stage. Since the alpha- 
 bet is certainly the most wonderful and perhaps the 
 most useful of all inventions, and since it is an Egyp- 
 tian invention, it is well worth your while to learn 
 how the Egyptian picture-signs hieroglyphics they 
 are called grew into letters, but if you wish to 
 understand the change you will have to give the sub- 
 ject very close attention. 
 
 Well, here was the Egyptian system of picture- 
 signs consisting of several thousand pictures of birds, 
 beasts, reptiles, insects, trees, flowers, and objects of 
 almost every description. Now suppose you were 
 employed in writing English by means of several 
 thousand picture-signs and in the course of an hour 
 would have to write the words manage, mansion, 
 mantle, mandate, might it not occur to you that it 
 would be a good thing if that sound man could be 
 
 represented by the picture-sign for man ( T ) ? 
 
 And if you had to write treacle, treason, treaty, 
 might you not feel like beginning these words with 
 
 a tree ( T ) ? At some time in the remote past 
 
 Egyptian scribes priests they usually were no- 
 ticing that syllables identical in sound were con- 
 stantly recurring in the different words, began to 
 represent these syllable-sounds that occurred most 
 frequently by picture-signs. 1 The picture-sign sub- 
 stituted for a syllable-sound was placed in the word 
 
 1 The illustration is taken from Keary's " Dawn of History." 
 208
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 not because it stood for an idea, but because it stood 
 for a sound, just as in the case supposed above you 
 
 would use the T or the f not because it repre- 
 sented a thought, but because it had a certain sound. 
 So certain Egyptian picture-signs began to be used 
 to represent the sound of certain syllables. The 
 picture-signs thus chosen were called phonograms. 
 
 The phonogram led to the alphabet. The scribes 
 in seeking a way to shorten their work found that 
 the syllable itself could be broken up into separate 
 sounds. For example, when they came to the sylla- 
 ble whose sound is spelled by our three letters 
 pad, they found that it had three distinct sounds, 
 namely: (i) one a lip sound which could be rep- 
 resented by the first sound of the picture-sign 14 
 
 (a door) ; (2) one an open-throat or vowel sound 
 which could be represented by the first sound of the 
 
 picture-sign X?X (an eagle); (3) one a dental 
 
 ""^jCL. 
 
 sound which could be represented by the first sound 
 in the picture-sign f<^-f (a hand). So the scribes 
 wrote the syllable (p-a-d) with the three characters 
 
 And so with all the other 
 
 sounds in the Egyptian language; each was repre- 
 sented by one of the picture-signs already used. 
 Since there were only about twenty-five distinct ele- 
 14 209
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 mentary sounds in the Egyptian language, twenty- 
 five picture-signs were sufficient to represent any 
 sound or any word in the language. These twenty- 
 five picture-sounds were the letters of the Egyptian 
 alphabet. Twenty-five characters instead of thou- 
 sands! Now the Egyptian youth could learn to 
 read in three or four years, whereas under the old 
 system it took fifteen or twenty years, just as it takes 
 fifteen or twenty years for the Chinese youth to learn 
 to read well. 
 
 Now that its origin has been explained, the story 
 of the alphabet may be rapidly told. Indeed, its 
 whole history can be learned from Figure 5. In 
 column (a) are the three Egyptian picture-signs re- 
 ferred to above. Column (b) shows how the rapid 
 writing of the priests reduced the old hieroglyphics 
 
 to script; C3 became <&? /^x hecame 2L- 
 
 ^"" ^nfl_ 
 
 and yO-^ became ^^^ . The Phoenicians, who 
 were great travelers, visited Egypt at a very early 
 date and borrowed not only the idea of the alphabet, 
 but also the forms of the Egyptian letters, as column 
 c shows. Column d confirms the words of Herod- 
 otus, who tells us that the Greeks borrowed their 
 alphabet from the Phoenicians. Column e shows 
 that the Greeks handed the alphabet on to the 
 Romans, who handed it on to us. Thus the three 
 letters p, a, d come straight from the Egyptians and 
 were originally a door, an t'tigli', and a hand, re- 
 
 210
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 spectively. As it is with these three letters, so it is 
 with nearly all the letters of our alphabet. If the 
 letters on the page before you could be suddenly 
 changed to their original form, you would behold a 
 motley collection of birds, serpents, animals, tools, 
 and articles of household use. 
 
 S-" 
 
 lif 
 
 (b) 
 
 (c) 
 
 (cl) 
 
 B 
 
 9 
 
 A 
 
 FIG . 5. SHOWING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THREE 
 LETTERS, P, A, AND D. 
 
 We must look to Egypt for the origin of the ma- 
 terial form of our book as well as for the origin 
 of our alphabetical characters. Before history had 
 dawned the Egyptians had covered over with their 
 writing nearly all the available surface on their pyra- 
 mids and in their temples. At a time too far back 
 for a date necessity seems to have compelled them 
 211
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 to seek a substitute for stone. This they found in 
 the papyrus plant, which grew in great luxuriance 
 in the valley of the Nile. They placed side by side 
 strips of the pith of the papyrus, and across these at 
 
 FIG. 6. AN ANCIENT VOLUME. 
 
 right angles they placed another layer of strips. 
 The two layers were then glued together and pressed 
 until a smooth surface was formed. This made one 
 sheet. To make a book a number of sheets were 
 fastened together end to end. When in book form 
 212
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 the papyrus was wound around a stick and kept in 
 the form of a roll, a volume (Fig. 6). The roll 
 was usually eight or ten inches wide, but its length 
 might be upward of a hundred feet. This papyrus 
 roll was the parent of our modern paper book, as 
 the word papyrus is the original of our word paper, 
 The pen used in writing upon papyrus was a split 
 reed (calamus), and the ink a mixture of soot and 
 gum. 
 
 FIG. /. THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE WORLD. WRITTEN NEARLY S,OOO 
 YEARS AGO. 
 
 The most ancient volume in the world is an Egyp- 
 tian papyrus (Fig. 7) now in the National Library 
 of France. It was written nearly 5,000 years ago 
 by an aged sage and contains precepts of right living. 
 In this oldest of volumes we find this priceless gem : 
 
 " If thou art become great, if after being in pov- 
 erty thou hast amassed riches and art become the 
 first in the city, if thou art known for thy wealth and 
 art become a great lord, let not thy heart become 
 213
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 proud, for it is God who is the author of them for 
 thee." 
 
 In Assyria and in other ancient countries of 
 Central Asia letters were engraved on cylinders 
 and these were rolled upon slabs of soft clay, mak- 
 ing an impression of the raised letters, just as 
 we make an impression with the seal of a ring. In 
 the ruins of the cities of Assyria these old clay 
 books may be found by the cart-load. The Assyrian 
 cylinder was really the first printing press. In an- 
 cient Greece and Rome wooden tablets within which 
 was spread a thin layer of wax were used as a writ- 
 ing surface in schools and in the business world. 
 The writing on the wax was done with a sharp- 
 pointed instrument of bone or iron called the stylus. 
 But next to papyrus the most important writing ma- 
 terial of antiquity was parchment, or the prepared 
 skin of young calves and kids. The invention of 
 parchment is said to have been due to the literary 
 ambitions of two kings, the king of Persia and the 
 king of Egypt. The king of Pergamus (250 B.C.) 
 wishing to have the finest and largest library in the 
 world was consuming enormous quantities of pa- 
 pyrus. The king of Egypt, who also wished to have 
 the finest library in the world, in order to cripple 
 the plans of his literary rival, issued a command for- 
 bidding the exportation of papyrus from Egypt. 
 The king of Pergamus, being unable to get pa- 
 pyrus except from Egypt, caused the skins of sheep 
 to be prepared, and on these skins books for his 
 214
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 library continued to be written. The prepared 
 skins received the name of pergamena, because they 
 were made in Pergamus, and from pergamena we 
 get the word parchment. This is the story that has 
 come down to us to explain the origin of parchment, 
 but it cannot be accepted as wholly true. We know 
 very well that the Old Testament was written in gold 
 on a roll of skins long before there was a king of 
 Pergamus. Indeed, writing was done on skins as 
 far back as the picture-writing period. 
 
 After the invention of the alphabet and of paper 
 (papyrus) books multiplied as never before. "Of 
 making many books there is no end," exclaimed 
 Solomon a thousand years before the Christian 
 era. Greece in her early day was slow to make 
 books, but after she learned from the Phoenicians 
 (800 B.C.) how to use an alphabet she made up for 
 lost time. In 600 B.C. there was a public library at 
 Athens, and 200 years later the Greeks had written 
 more good books than all the other countries in the 
 world combined. 
 
 But the most productive of ancient book-makers 
 were the Romans. In Rome publishing houses were 
 flourishing in the time of Cicero (50 B.C.). Atticus, 
 one of Cicero's best friends, was a publisher. Let 
 us see how a book was made in his establishment. 
 Of course, there were no type-setters or printing- 
 presses. Every book was a manuscript; every word 
 of every copy had to be written with a pen. The 
 writing was sometimes done by slaves trained to 
 215
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 write neatly and rapidly. We may imagine 50 or 
 100 slaves sitting at desks in a room writing to the 
 dictation of the reader. Now if Atticus had ten 
 readers each of whom dictated to 100 slaves it took 
 only two or three days for the publication of 1,000 
 copies of one of his friend Cicero's books. Of 
 course every copy would not be perfect. The slave 
 would sometimes make blunders and write what the 
 reader did not dictate. But books in our own time 
 are not free of errors. An English poet recently 
 wrote: 
 
 " Like dew-drops upon fresh blown roses." 
 
 In print the first letter of the last word in the line 
 appeared as n instead of r. This mistake disfigured 
 thousands of copies. In the Roman publishing 
 house such a blunder marred only one copy. 
 
 You can readily see that by methods just described 
 books could be made in great numbers. And so 
 they were. Slaves were cheap and numerous and 
 the cost of publication was small. It is estimated 
 that a good sized volume in Nero's time (50 A.D.) 
 would sell for a shilling. Books were cheaper in 
 those days than they had ever been before and al- 
 most as cheap as they are to-day, perhaps. The 
 Roman world became satiated with reading matter. 
 The poet Martial exclaimed, " Every one has me 
 in his pocket, every one has me in his hand." Books 
 became a drug on the market and could be sold only 
 to grocers for " wrapping up pastry and spices." 
 216
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 But a time was to come when books would not be 
 so plentiful and cheap. With the overthrow of 
 
 FIG. 8. BOOK-MAKING IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Rome (476 A.o.) culture received a blow from 
 which it did not recover for a thousand years. The 
 barbarian invaders of Southern Europe destroyed all 
 the books they could find and caused the writers of 
 books to flee within the walls of the churches. 
 Throughout the Middle Ages nearly all the writing 
 in Europe was done in the religious houses of monks 
 (Fig. 8), and nearly all the books written were of a 
 religious nature. The monks worked with the great- 
 est patience and care upon their manuscripts. They 
 often wrote on vellum (calf-skin parchment) and 
 illuminated the page with beautiful colors and 
 adorned it with artistic figures. 
 
 The manuscript volumes of the dark ages were 
 beautiful' and magnificent, but their cost was so great 
 217
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 that only the most wealthy could buy. A Bible 
 would sometimes cost thousands of dollars. Along 
 in the I4th and I5th centuries Europe began to thirst 
 for knowledge and there arose a demand for cheap 
 books. How could the demand be met? There 
 were now no hordes of intelligent slaves who could 
 be put to work with their pens, and without slave 
 labor the cost of the written book could not be 
 greatly reduced. Invention, as always, came to the 
 rescue and gave the world what it wanted. 
 
 In the first place, writing material was made 
 cheaper by the invention of paper-making. The 
 wasp in making its nest had given a hint for paper- 
 making, but man was extremely slow to take the 
 hint. The Chinese had done something in the way 
 of making paper from the bark of trees as early as 
 the first century, but it was not until the middle of 
 the 1 3th century that paper began to be manufac- 
 tured in Europe from hemp, rags, linen, and cotton. 
 
 In the second place, printing was invented. On 
 
 a strip of transparent paper write the word post. 
 
 Now turn the strip over from right to left and trace 
 
 the letters on the smooth surface of a block of wood. 
 
 __-.-_ Remove the paper and you will have 
 
 /^f JM the result shown in Figure 9. With a 
 
 sharp knife cut out the wood from 
 
 around the letters. Ink the raised 
 
 letters and press upon them a piece of paper. You 
 
 have printed the word " post " in precisely the way 
 
 the first books were printed. In the I3th century 
 
 218
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 fancy designs were engraved on wood and by the aid 
 of ink the figures were stamped on silk and linen. 
 In the 1 4th century playing cards and books were 
 printed on engraved blocks in the manner the word 
 "post" was printed above. (Fig. 10.) The 
 block-book was the first step in the art of printing. 
 
 The block-book decreased the cost 
 of a book, for when a page was once 
 engraved as many impressions could 
 be taken as were wanted, yet it did 
 not meet the necessities of the time. 
 In the middle of the I5th century 
 the desire for reading began to re- 
 semble a frenzy and the books that 
 could be got hold of " were as in- 
 sufficient to slake the thirsty craving 
 for religious and material knowl- 
 edge as a few rain drops to quench 
 the burning thirst of the traveler in 
 the desert who seeks for long, deep- 
 draughts at copious springs of living 
 water." To meet the demand of the time book- 
 makers everywhere were trying to improve on the 
 block-making process and by the end of the century 
 the book as we have it to-day was being made 
 throughout all Europe. 
 
 In what did the improvement consist? First let 
 
 us call to mind what the book-maker in the early 
 
 part of the I5th century had to begin with; he had 
 
 paper, he had printing-ink, he had skill in engrav- 
 
 219 
 
 FIG. IO. A BLOCK 
 PRINT CONTAIN- 
 ING THE AL- 
 PHABET USED 
 BY CHILDREN 
 WHEN LEARN- 
 ING TO READ.
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 ing whole pages for block-books, and he had a rude 
 kind of printing-press. The improvement consisted 
 in this: Instead of engraving a whole page on a 
 block, single letters were engraved on little blocks 
 called types, and when a word or a line or a page 
 
 FIG. II. AN EARLY PRINTING PRESS. 
 
 was to be printed these types were set in the position 
 desired; in other words, the improvement consisted 
 in the invention of moveable types. The types were 
 first made of wood and afterward of metal. 
 
 The great advantage of the moveable types over 
 the block-book is easily seen. A block containing, 
 say, the word " post " is useless except for printing 
 the word post; but divide it into four blocks, each 
 containing a letter: now you can print post, spot, 
 tops, stop, top, sop, sot, pot, so, to and so forth. 
 
 The exact date of the invention of moveable types 
 220
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 cannot be determined. We can only say that they 
 were first used between 1450 and 1460. Nor can 
 we tell who invented them. The Dutch claim that 
 Lawrence Koster of Harlem (Holland) made some 
 moveable types as early as 1430, and that John 
 Faust, an employee, stole them and carried them 
 to Mayence (Germany), where John Gutenberg 
 learned the secret of printing with them. The Ger- 
 mans claim that Gutenberg was the real inventor. 
 Much can be said in behalf of both claims. What 
 we really know is that the earliest complete book 
 printed on moveable types was a Bible which came 
 from the press of John Gutenberg in 1455. 
 
 Since 1450 there has been no discovery that has 
 changed the character of the printed volume. There 
 have been wonderful improvements in the processes 
 of making and setting type, and printing-presses 
 (Fig. 11) have become marvels of mechanical skill, 
 but the book of to-day is essentially like the book of 
 four hundred years ago. The tablet of the memory, 
 the knotted cord and notched stick, the uncanny 
 picture-writing, the clumsy picture-sign, the alphabet, 
 the manuscript volume, the printed block-book and 
 the volume before you bring to an end the story of 
 the book. 
 
 221
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 MEN had not been living together long in a 
 state of society before they found it necessary 
 to communicate with their fellow-men at a distance 
 and in order to do this the message was invented. 
 We have seen (p. 205) that among certain tribes of 
 savages notched sticks bearing messages were sent 
 from one tribe to another. Among the ancient 
 Peruvians the message took the form of the curious 
 looking quipu. After the alphabet had been in- 
 vented and papyrus had come into use as a writing 
 material, the message took the form of a written 
 document and resembled somewhat the modern letter. 
 The ancient Egyptians, as we 
 would expect, were the first to make 
 use of the letter in the sending of 
 messages (Fig. i). The ancient 
 Hebrews were also familiar with the 
 FIG. i. A LETTER letter as a means of communication. 
 
 aE R NT ER E GYPT AN " We Te * d in the book of Chronicles 
 
 how the post went with the letters 
 
 of the king and his princes throughout all Israel. 
 
 The word post, as used here and elsewhere in the 
 
 Bible, signifies a runner, that is, one specially 
 
 trained to deliver letters or despatches speedily 
 
 222
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 by running. Thus Jeremiah predicted that after 
 the fall of Babylon " one post shall run to meet 
 another and one messenger to meet another to show 
 the King that his city is taken." Although we fre- 
 quently read of the post in Biblical times we are no- 
 where told that the ordinary people enjoyed the 
 privileges of the post. In olden times it was only 
 kings and princes and persons of high degree that 
 sent and received letters. 
 
 In nearly all the countries of antiquity there was 
 an organized postal system which was under the con- 
 trol of the govern- 
 ment and which car- 
 r i e d only govern- 
 ment messages. In 
 Egypt there were 
 postal chariots (Fig. 
 
 . , f. FIG. 2. AN EGYPTIAN MAIL CART. 
 
 2 ) of wonderful 
 
 lightness designed especially for carrying the let- 
 ters of the king at the greatest possible speed. 
 In ancient Judea messengers must have traveled 
 very fast, for Job, in his old age, says: "Now 
 my days are swifter than the post, they flee away." 
 In ancient Persia the postal system awakened 
 the admiration of Herodotus. " Nothing mortal," 
 says this old Greek historian, " travels so fast 
 as these Persian messengers. The entire plan 
 is a Persian invention and this is the method 
 of it. Along the whole line of road there are 
 men stationed with horses, the number of sta- 
 223
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 tions being equal to the number of days which the 
 journey takes, allowing a man and a horse to each 
 day, and these men will not be hindered from accom- 
 plishing at their best speed the distance they will 
 have to go either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by 
 the darkness of night. The first rider delivers the 
 message to the second and the second to the third, 
 and so it is borne from hand to hand along the whole- 
 line." 
 
 The postal system which Herodotus found in 
 Persia was better than the system which existed in 
 his own country for the reason that the Greeks re- 
 lied upon human messengers 
 rather than upon horses to 
 carry their messages. Young 
 Greeks were specially trained 
 
 ^' g * ^ aS runners ^ or tne 
 postal service and Greek his- 
 tory contains accounts of the 
 marvelous endurance and 
 swiftness of those employed 
 
 to carry messages. After the defeat of the 
 Persians by the Greeks at Marathon (490 B.C.) a 
 runner carried the news southward and did not pause 
 for rest until he reached Athens when he shouted 
 the word " Victory ! " and expired, being overcome 
 by fatigue. Another Greek, Phillipides by name, 
 was despatched from Athens to Sparta to ask the 
 Spartans for aid in the war which the Athenians were 
 carrying on against Persia, and the distance between 
 224
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 the two cities about 140 miles was accom- 
 plished by the runner in less than two days. 
 
 But the best postal system of ancient times was 
 the one which was organized by the Romans. As 
 one country after another 
 was brought under the do- 
 minion of Rome it became 
 more and more necessary 
 for the Roman government 
 to keep in close touch with 
 all the parts of the vast 
 empire. Accordingly, by FIG. 4. A LETTER CARRIER OF 
 
 , ... , ANCIENT ROME. 
 
 the time of Augustus (14 
 
 A.D. ), there was established throughout the Ro- 
 man world a fully organized and well-equipped sys- 
 tem of posts. Along the magnificent roads which 
 led out from Rome there were built at regular 
 distances stations, or post-houses, where horses 
 and riders were stationed for the purpose of receiv- 
 ing the messages of the government and hurry- 
 ing them along to the place of their destination. 
 The stations were only five or six miles apart and 
 each station was provided with a large number of 
 horses and riders. By the frequent changes of 
 horses a letter could be hurried along with consider- 
 able speed (Fig. 4). " By the help of the relays," 
 says Gibbon, " it was easy to travel a hundred miles 
 in a day." 
 
 When Rome fell (476 A.D.) before the attacks of 
 barbarous tribes her excellent postal system fell with 
 '* 225
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 her and many centuries passed before messages could 
 again be regularly and quickly despatched between 
 widely separated points. Charles the Great, the 
 emperor of the Franks, established (800 A.D.) a 
 postal system in his empire but the service did not 
 long survive the great ruler. In the I3th century 
 the merchants of the Hanse towns of Northern Ger- 
 many could communicate with each other somewhat 
 regularly by letter, but the ordinary people of these 
 towns did not enjoy the privileges of a postal service. 
 In the Middle Ages, as in the ancient times, the pub- 
 lic post was established solely for the benefit of the 
 government. Private messages had to be sent as best 
 they could be by private messengers and at private 
 expense. As late as the reign of Henry VIII 
 (1509-1547) the only regular post route in England 
 was one which was established for the exclusive use 
 of the king. 
 
 But the time was soon to come when ordinary 
 citizens as well as officers of state were to share in 
 the benefits of a postal system. In 1635 Charles I 
 of England gave orders that a post should run night 
 and day between Edinburgh and London and that 
 postmen should take with them all such letters as 
 might be directed to towns on or near the road which 
 connected the two cities. The rate of postage 1 was 
 
 1 In the payment of the postage no stamps were as yet used. 
 Indeed the postage stamp is a late invention. Postage stamps 
 were not used in England until the . year 1840, while in the 
 United States they were not regularly used until 1847. 
 226
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 fixed at two pence for a single letter when the dis- 
 tance was under sixty miles; four pence when the 
 distance was between 60 and 140 miles; six pence 
 for any longer distance in England; and eight pence 
 from London to any place in Scotland. It was 
 ordered that only messengers of the king should be 
 allowed to carry letters for profit unless to places to 
 which the king's post did not go. Here was the 
 beginning of the modern postal system and the mod- 
 ern post-office. Henceforth the post was to carry 
 not only the king's messages, but the messages of all 
 people who would pay the required postage. 
 
 The example set by England in throwing the post 
 open to the public was followed by other nations, 
 and before a hundred years had passed nearly all 
 the civilized countries of the world were enjoying 
 the privilege and blessings of a well-organized postal 
 system. It is true that the post for a long time 
 moved very slowly a hundred miles a day was 
 regarded as a flying rate and postage for a long 
 time was very high, but the service grew constantly 
 better and by the close of the nineteenth century 
 trains were dashing along with the mails at the rate 
 of a thousand miles a day and postage within a coun- 
 try had been reduced to two cents, 1 while for a nickel 
 
 1 In 1840, the English government following the recommenda- 
 tions of Sir Rowland Hill, adopted throughout the United King- 
 dom a uniform rate of one penny for letters not exceeding half 
 an ounce in weight, and after this cheap postage became the 
 rule in all countries. 
 
 227
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 a letter could be sent to the most distant parts of the 
 globe. 
 
 Thus far we have traced the history of only one 
 kind of message, the kind that has the form of a 
 written document and that is conveyed by a human 
 carrier over land and water from one place to an- 
 other. But there is a kind of message which is not 
 borne along by human hands and which does not 
 travel on land or water. This is the telegraph, 1 the 
 message which darts through space and is delivered 
 at a distant point almost at the very instant at which 
 it is sent. 
 
 The first telegraph was an aerial message and con- 
 sisted of a signal made by a flash of light. From the 
 earliest times men have used fire signals as a means 
 of sending messages to distant points. When the 
 city of Troy in Asia Minor was captured by the 
 Greeks (about noo B.C.) torches flashing their 
 light from one mountain top to another quickly car- 
 ried the news to the far-off cities of Greece. The 
 ancient Greeks gave a great deal of attention to the 
 art of signaling by fire and they invented several 
 very ingenious systems of aerial telegraphy. The 
 most interesting of these systems is one invented and 
 described by the Greek historian Polybius, who 
 flourished about 150 B.C. When signaling with 
 fire Polybius arranged for using two groups of 
 torches with five torches in each group, and for the 
 purpose of understanding the signals he divided the 
 
 1 The verb telegraph means to write at a distance afar off. 
 228
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 letters of the alphabet into five groups of five letters 
 each. 1 The torches were raised according to a plan 
 that made it possible to flash a signal that would in- 
 dicate any letter of the alphabet that might be de- 
 sired. Thus if the desired letter was the third one 
 of the first group that is, the letter k one torch 
 
 
 FIG. 5. TELEGRAPHING BY MEANS OF FIRE, 150 B.C. 
 
 would show which group was meant and three torches 
 would show which letter was meant (Fig. 5). In 
 theory this system was perfect, for it provided for 
 sending any kind of message whatever. But in prac- 
 
 1 As there are only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, the last 
 group was one letter short, but this did not interfere with the 
 working of the system, 
 
 229
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 tice it had little value, for it required so many torches 
 and signals that an entire night was consumed in 
 spelling out a few words. 
 
 Although the elaborate system of aerial telegraph 
 proposed by PolyJbius was not generally adopted, 
 nevertheless for centuries, both in ancient times and 
 during the middle ages, the fire signal was every- 
 where used for the quick despatch of important news. 
 In the seventeenth century inventors began to devise 
 new systems of aerial telegraphy. In 1663, the 
 Marquis of Worcester, who was always busy with 
 some great invention (p. 178), announced to the 
 world that he had discovered a plan by which one 
 could talk with another as far as the eye could dis- 
 tinguish between black and white, and that this con- 
 versation could be carried on by night as well as by 
 day, even though the night were as dark and as 
 black as pitch. But the telegraph of the Marquis 
 was like many of his other inventions it was 
 chiefly on paper. In 1864, Dr. Robert Hooke of 
 England invented a method by which aerial messages 
 could be sent a distance of thirty or forty miles. 
 His plan was to erect on hill tops a series of high 
 poles connected above by cross-pieces and by means 
 of pulleys suspend from the cross-pieces the letters 
 of the alphabet which would spell out the message 
 (Fig. 6). In order to read the letters at such great 
 distances the eye was assisted by the telescope, an 
 instrument which had recently been invented. 
 
 But the greatest improvement in aerial telegraphy 
 230
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 was made during the French Revolution by Claude 
 Chappe, a Frenchman living in Paris. In 1793, 
 Chappe erected on the roof of the palace of the 
 Louvre a post at the top of which was a cross-beam 
 which moved on a pivot about the center like a scale 
 beam (Fig. 7). The cross-beam could be moved 
 
 FIG. 6. HOOKE'S AE- 
 RIAL TELEGRAPH. 
 
 1684. 
 
 FIG. 7. CHAPPED 
 AERIAL TELE- 
 GRAPH, 1793. 
 
 horizontally, vertically or at almost any angle by 
 means of cords. Chappe invented a number of po- 
 sitions for these arms and each position stood for a 
 certain letter of the alphabet. Machines of this 
 kind were erected on towers at places from nine to 
 twelve miles apart and soon Chappe was sending 
 messages from Paris to the city of Lille, 130 miles 
 away. The messages were sent with great rapidity, 
 for they passed from one tower to another with the 
 231
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 velocity of light about 185,000 miles a second 
 and it was possible for the operator to spell out 
 about 100 words in an hour. And Chappe's mes- 
 sages could be sent at any time, day or night, for 
 the arms of the machine were furnished with Argand 
 lamps for night work. 
 
 Chappe's invention was the greatest which had 
 thus far been made in the history of the message. 
 The new system of telegraphy proved to be entirely 
 successful and practical and it was not long before 
 machines similar to those invented by Chappe were 
 in use in England and other countries. In 1828, 
 an English writer had the following words of praise 
 for aerial telegraphy : " Telegraphs have now been 
 brought to so great a degree of perfection that they 
 carry information so speedily and distinctly and are 
 so much simplified that they can be constructed and 
 maintained at little expense. The advantages, too, 
 which result from their use are almost inconceivable. 
 Not to speak of the speed with which information is 
 communicated and orders given in time of war, by 
 means of these aerial signals the whole kingdom 
 could be prepared in an instant to oppose an invading 
 enemy." 
 
 But the aerial telegraph was soon to have a most 
 dangerous rival. This rival was the electric tele- 
 graph. Many years before the invention of Chappe 
 men had been experimenting with electricity with a 
 view of sending messages by means of an electric 
 current. These experiments began in 1728 when 
 232
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 an Englishman named Gray caused electricity to 
 produce motion in light bodies located at a distance 
 of more than 600 feet. In 1748, the great Benja- 
 min Franklin, who conducted so many wonderful 
 experiments in electricity, sent an electric current 
 through a wire which was stretched across the Schuyl- 
 kill River and set fire to some alcohol which was at 
 the opposite end of the wire. We may regard the 
 flash of alcohol as a telegraph, for it could have been 
 used as a signal. In 1819, Professor Oersted of 
 Copenhagen brought a magnetic needle close to a 
 body through which an electric current was passing 
 and he observed that the needle had a tendency to 
 place itself at right angles to the electrified body. 
 In 1825, William Sturgeon of England coiled a 
 copper wire around a bar of soft iron and found 
 that when a current of electricity was sent through 
 the wire the bar of iron be- 
 came a temporary magnet; 
 that is, the bar of iron at- 
 tracted a needle when the 
 current was passing through 
 the wire and ceased to at- 
 tract it when the current 
 was broken (Fig. 8). 
 These discoveries of Oer- 
 sted and Sturgeon led to the invention known 
 as the electro-magnet and the electro-magnet 
 led rapidly to the invention of the electric tele- 
 graph, for by means of the electro-magnet a sig- 
 2 33
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 nal can be sent to a distance as far as a cur- 
 rent of electricity can be sent along a wire. In 
 1831, Professor Joseph Henry, one of America's 
 most distinguished scientists, discovered a method by 
 
 FIG. Q. PROFESSOR HENRY'S ELECTRO- MAl.NKT, 
 1832. 
 
 which an electric current could be sent along a wire 
 for a very great distance. The next year Henry 
 constructed and operated an apparatus which was 
 essentially an electric telegraph (Pig. 9). "I ar- 
 ranged," he said, " around one of the upper rooms 
 of the Albany Academy a wire of more than a mile 
 in length through which I was enabled to make 
 signals by sounding a bell. The mechanical ar- 
 rangement for effecting this object was simply a steel 
 bar permanently magnetized, supported on a pivot 
 and placed with its north end between the two arms 
 of a horse-shoe magnet. When the latter was ex- 
 cited by the current the end of the bar thus placed 
 was attracted by one arm of the horse-shoe and re- 
 234
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 pelled by the other and was thus caused to move in 
 a horizontal plane and its further extremity to strike 
 a bell suitably adjusted." Thus by 1832 the elec- 
 tric current had been used for sending signals at a 
 distance and the electric telegraph had been invented. 
 But the electric telegraph was still only a toy. 
 How could it be made a practical machine? How 
 could it be used for sending messages in a satisfac- 
 tory manner? Inventors everywhere worked dili- 
 gently to discover a satisfactory method of signaling 
 and many ingenious systems were invented. As 
 early as 1837 a telegraph line was established be- 
 tween Paddington, England and Drayton a dis- 
 tance of 13 miles and messages were sent over 
 the wire. But the line failed to give satisfaction 
 and its use was discontinued. The honor of invent- 
 ing the first really practical and useful system of 
 electrical telegraphy was at last won by an American, 
 S. F. B. Morse, a painter and professor of literature 
 in the University of the City of New York. In 
 1832 Morse began to think about a plan for record- 
 ing signals sent by electricity and by 1837 he was 
 about ready to take out a patent for making signals 
 41 by the mechanical force of electro-magnetic mo- 
 tion." Morse was a poor man and he lacked the 
 means of conducting his experiments. He was 
 fortunate, however, in making the acquaintance and 
 gaining the confidence of Alfred Vail, a student of 
 the University. Vail furnished the money for the 
 experiments and assisted Morse in perfecting his 
 235
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 system. Indeed some of the most original and valu- 
 able features of Morse's system were invented by 
 young Vail and not by Morse. In the face of much 
 discouragement and bad luck Morse and Vail worked 
 patiently on together and by 1843 their invention 
 was completed. 
 
 The main feature of Morse's system was to use 
 the electric current for sending an alphabetical code 
 consisting of certain combinations of " dots and 
 dashes." The " dots " were simply clicking sounds 
 and the " dashes " were simply intervals between 
 the clicking sounds. The sounds were made by 
 closing and breaking the current by means of a key 
 or button (Fig. 10). If the sender of the message 
 pressed upon the key and immediately released it 
 
 FIG. 10. THE KEY USED BY MORSE. 
 
 he made at the other end of the line a sharp click 
 which was called a " dot," and a single dot accord- 
 ing to the code was the letter E. If the sender of 
 the message pressed upon the key and held it down 
 for a moment he made what was called a " dash," 
 and a single dash according to the code was the letter 
 236
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 T. Thus by means of " dots and dashes " any letter 
 of the alphabet could be speedily sent. 
 
 Morse applied to Congress to aid him in his plans 
 and in 1843 ne secured an appropriation of $30,000 
 
 FIG. II. MORSES TELEGRAPHIC INSTRUMENT. 
 
 for establishing a telegraph line between Baltimore 
 and Washington. Morse and Vail now hurried the 
 great work on and by May, 1844, the wires had 
 been stretched between the two cities and the instru' 
 ments were ready for trial. And such heavy, clumsy 
 affairs the instruments (Fig. n) were! "The re- 
 ceiving apparatus weighed 185 pounds and it 
 required the strength of two strong men to handle 
 it. At the present day an equally effective magnet 
 237
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 need not weigh more than four ounces and might be 
 carried in the vest pocket." But, awkward and 
 clumsy as it was, the new telegraph did its work 
 well. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent from Wash- 
 ington the historic message, " What hath God 
 wrought?" (Fig. 12) and in the twinkling of an 
 eye it was received by Vail at Baltimore, forty miles 
 away. 
 
 vr <& a. 
 $ 
 
 FIG. 12. THE FIRST TET.KGRAPHIC MF.SSAGE SENT FROM WASHINGTON 
 TO BALTIMORE, MAY 24, 1- S 44. 
 
 The Morse system proved to be profitable as well 
 as successful and after 1844 the electric telegraph 
 was soon in general use in all parts of the world. 
 In the United States cities were rapidly connected 
 by wire and by 1860 all the principal places in the 
 country could communicate with each other by tele- 
 graph. In 1 86 1, a telegraph line extended across 
 the continent and connected New York and San 
 Francisco. Five years later, thanks to the perse- 
 verance and energy of Cyrus W. Field, of New 
 York, the Old World and the New were joined to- 
 gether by a telegraphic cable passing through the 
 waters of the Atlantic from a point on the coast of 
 238
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 Ireland to a point on the coast of Newfoundland. 
 With the laying of this cable, in 1866, all parts of 
 the world were brought into telegraphic communica- 
 tion and it seemed that the last step in the develop- 
 ment of the message had been taken. 
 
 But the story of the Message did not end with the 
 invention of the telegraph and the laying of the 
 Atlantic cable. Almost as soon as inventors had 
 learned how to send a current along a wire and make 
 signals at a distance they began trying experiments 
 to see if they could not also send sounds, especially 
 the sound of the human voice, along a wire; as soon 
 as they had made the telegraph they began to try to 
 make the telephone. 1 In 1855 Professor Wheat- 
 stone of England invented an instrument by means 
 of which musical sounds made in one part of a 
 building were carried noiselessly along a wire 
 through several intervening halls and reproduced at 
 the other end of the wire in a distant part of the 
 building. About the same time a Frenchman named 
 Bourseul produced a device by which a disk vibra- 
 ting under the influence of the human voice would, 
 by means of an electric current, produce similar 
 vibrations of a disk located at a distance. 
 
 About 1874 Professor Alexander Graham Bell, 
 of Boston, seized upon an idea similar to that of 
 Bourseul's. Bell saw in the vibrating disk a resem- 
 blance to the drum of the human ear. In imagina- 
 
 1 Just as the word telegraph means to " write afar off," so 
 the word telephone means to "sound afar off." 
 
 239
 
 STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS 
 
 tion he beheld " two iron disks, or ear drums, far 
 apart and connected by an electrified wire, catching 
 vibrations of sound at one end and reproducing them 
 at the other." With this conception in mind he 
 went to work to construct an apparatus that would 
 actually catch the sounds of the voice and reproduce 
 them at a distance. Bell, like Morse, was without 
 means to conduct his experiments, but friends came 
 to his aid and furnished 
 him with the necessary 
 money and by 1876 his 
 labors had resulted in mak- 
 ing a machine that would 
 carry the human voice; he 
 had invented the telephone. 
 At first the telephone was 
 only a toy and would op- 
 
 ING OVER THE FIRST LONG but as improvements were 
 
 ^".*SS! E A'E>,de the distances grew 
 
 CHICAGO. greater and greater until at 
 
 last one could talk in Boston and be heard in Den- 
 
 ver, or talk in New York and be heard in London. 
 
 The telephone grew rapidly into favor as a means of 
 
 communication and in a short time it was used more 
 
 than the telegraph. It is estimated that in the entire 
 
 world about ten billion conversations are held over 
 
 the telephone in the course of a single year. 
 
 As wonderful as the telephone was it was quickly 
 followed by an invention even more wonderful. Al- 
 240
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 most as soon as men had -thoroughly mastered the 
 art of sending messages by the aid of wires they set 
 about trying to find a way by which messages could 
 be sent long distances without any wires at all. In 
 1889, Heinrich Hertz, a German scientist, showed 
 that electric waves could be sent out in all directions 
 just as light waves go out in all directions. He also 
 showed how these waves might be produced and 
 how they might be detected 
 or caught as they passed 
 through space. In 1896, 
 William Marconi, an 
 Italian electrician, making 
 use of the facts discovered 
 by Hertz, sent a message a 
 distance of 300 feet without 
 the use of wires. This was 
 
 the first wireless telegraph. FIG - 14- A WIRELESS TELE- 
 TV, . . r i GRAPH STATION. 
 
 Marconi continued his ex- 
 periments, sending wireless messages between places 
 further and further apart, and by 1911 he was able to 
 signal without cables across the Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 And now it seems that the wireless telegraph is 
 to be followed by an invention still more wonderful. 
 Men are now working upon a wireless telephone. 
 Already it is possible to talk without the aid of 
 wires between places so far apart as Newark and 
 Philadelphia, and many inventors believe that it is 
 only a matter of time when the wireless telephone 
 will be used side by side with the wireless telegraph. 
 16 241
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aerial messages, 228. 
 Aerial telegraphy, 229-233. 
 African loom, 115. 
 Alfred the Great, 196. 
 Alphabet, 208-211. 
 Alphabetical Code, 229, 236. 
 Amphora, 193. 
 Anacharsis, 170. 
 Anchor, 169, 170. 
 Arch, 135, 137. 
 Arc-light, 36. 
 Argand, 34. 
 Arkwright, 119. 
 Atrium, 16. 
 Automobile, 161. 
 Axle, 147. 
 
 Balance-wheel (of a watch), 
 
 199. 
 
 Bamboo dwelling, 128. 
 Basket weaving, no. 
 Batten (of loom), 115. 
 Beam (of plow), 75, 80. 
 Bell, Alexander Graham, 239. 
 Bellows, 43, 47. 
 Bessemer, Sir Henry, 51. 
 " Black room," 16. 
 
 Blast-furnace, 46-52. 
 Block-book, 219. 
 BOAT, history of, 166-186. 
 Boiling, 15. 
 Bolting (flour), 107. 
 BOOK, history of, 203-221. 
 Bourseul's telephone, 239. 
 Branca's engine, 58, 71. 
 Brazier, 18. 
 Bresnier, 163, 164. 
 Bronze, 38-40. 
 Bronze Age, 38. 
 Burning glass, 9. 
 
 Cable, Atlantic, 238. 
 
 Calamus, 213. 
 
 Candles, 30-32, 190. 
 
 Canoe, 168. 
 
 Capital (of column), 133. 
 
 Car, electric, 161. 
 
 CARRIAGE, history of, 144-165. 
 
 Cart, 147-151. 
 
 Cast iron, 47. 
 
 Cave dwellings, 125. 
 
 Chappe, Claude, 231. 
 
 Charcoal, 42, 48, 49. 
 
 Charlemagne's clock, 196. 
 
 Chariots, 151-152. 
 
 Charlotte Dundas, 182, 
 
 243
 
 244 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chemical matches, 9. 
 Chilcoot loom, 113. 
 Chimneys, 21. 
 China, 175, 191. 
 Clepsydra, 193-195. 
 Clermont, the, 183. 
 CLOCK, history of, 187-202. 
 Cliff dwellings, 125. 
 Coach, 153. 
 Coke, 49. 
 
 Cologne, cathedral, 138. 
 Colonial architecture, 141. 
 Columns, 131, 132. 
 Compass, mariner's, 175. 
 Complete harvester, 95. 
 Condenser, 69. 
 Cooking, 15, 19. 
 Corinthian column, 133. 
 Cradle (for scythe), 86. 
 Cradle scythe, 87. 
 Cugnot's steam-engine, 156. 
 Cutter (for reaper), 90, 92. 
 
 D 
 
 Darby, Abraham, 49. 
 Deck (of a boat), 172. 
 De Vick, Henry, 197. 
 Digging-stick, 74. 
 Doric column, 132. 
 Drag, 147. 
 Dudley, Dud, 49. 
 Dutch plow, 79. 
 
 Edison, Thomas, 37. 
 Egypt (ancient), 76, 85, 128, 
 151, 153, 208, 211, 222. 
 
 Electric car, 161. 
 
 Electric light, 36. 
 
 Electric stove, 27. 
 
 Electric telegraph, 232-239. 
 
 Electro-magnet, 232. 
 
 Elevator architecture, 142. 
 
 England, 22, 49, 59, 89, 176, 178, 
 
 227. 
 
 Ericsson, John, 184. 
 Escapement, 198. 
 
 Faust, John, 221. 
 Felly, 152. 
 
 Field, Cyrus W., 238. 
 Firebrands, 4. 
 Fire-clock, 189. 
 Fire drill, 6. 
 Fireflies, 28. 
 Fireplace, 14, 20. 
 Fire signals, 228. 
 Fitch, John, 181. 
 Flying-machine, 163. 
 Flying shuttle, 116. 
 FORGE, history of 38-53. 
 France, 23, 178. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 233. 
 Friction-chemical match, 10. 
 Fulton, Robert, 18*. 
 Furnaces, 25, 46. 
 
 Gable, 131, 136. 
 
 Galley, 171. 
 
 Gang plow, 78, 83. 
 
 Gas, 35. 
 
 Germany, 46, 221. 
 
 Gothic architecture, 137.
 
 INDEX 
 
 245 
 
 Gray's electric telegraph, 233. 
 Greeks (ancient), 18, 32, 57, 
 
 86, 131, 152, 171, 192, 215, 
 
 224. 
 Gutenberg, John, 221. 
 
 H 
 
 Haimault scythe, 87. 
 
 Hargreaves, 119. 
 
 Harvester, complete, 95. 
 
 Heating, 7. 
 
 Hebrews (ancient), 86, 102, 
 
 222. 
 
 Heddle, 112, 114. 
 Henry, Joseph, 234. 
 Hero's Engine, 55, 71. 
 Hertz, Heinrich, 241. 
 Hieroglyphics, 208. 
 Hill, Sir Rowland, 227. 
 Hooke, Robert, 230. 
 Hopper (for mill), too. 
 Horse, 146. 
 
 Horseless carriage, 161. 
 Hot blast, 50. 
 HOUSE, history of, 123-147. 
 Hub, 151. 
 Hussey, Obed, 91. 
 Huygens, Christian, 201. 
 Hypocaust, 18. 
 
 Ideographs, 207. 
 Incandescent light, 37. 
 Industrial revolution, 119, 158. 
 Ionic column, 133. 
 Iron Age, 44-52- 
 IRON, history of, 41-63. 
 Iron plow, 81. 
 
 J 
 
 Jacquard's attachment, 122. 
 Jacquard, Joseph, 120. 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 81. 
 Job's plow, 75. 
 Jouffroy, Marquis, 178. 
 
 Katta, 74. 
 Kay, John, 116. 
 Keel, 169. 
 
 Knocking-stone, 97. 
 Koster, Laurence, 221. 
 Knots (for writing), 204. 
 
 Lake dwellings, 126. 
 LAMP, history of, 28-37. 
 Langley, Professor, 165. 
 Lathe (of loom), 115. 
 Letter, 222. 
 
 Livingstone (quoted), 99. 
 Llama, 145. 
 Locomotive, 156-161. 
 LOOM, history of, 109-122. 
 
 M 
 
 McCormick, Cyrus, 91. 
 Magnetic needle, 175. 
 Manuscript volumes, 217. 
 Marconi, William, 240. 
 Mariner's compass, 175. 
 MATCH, history of, 4-12. 
 Memory aids, 204. 
 MESSAGE, history of the, 222- 
 
 241. 
 Message sticks, 205.
 
 246 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Meteoric iron, 41. 
 MILL, history of, 97-108. 
 Millstone, 100. 
 Mortar, 97. 
 Moldboards, 78, 81. 
 Morse, S. F. B., 235. 
 Moveable types, 220. 
 Murdock, William, 35. 
 
 N 
 
 Newbold, Charles, 82. 
 Newcomen, Thomas, 62. 
 Neilson, 49. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 156. 
 " Niirenburg eggs," 199. 
 
 Oarlock, 168. 
 Oersted, Professor, 233. 
 Ogle, Henry, 90. 
 Ore (iron), 41. 
 
 Phonograms, 209. 
 
 Phosphorus matches, n. 
 
 Picture signs, 206. 
 
 Pig iron, 47. 
 
 Piston, 62. 
 
 Plato, 194. 
 
 Pliny, 76, 89. 
 
 Pliny's plow, 77. 
 
 PLOW, history of, 73-84. 
 
 Pointed arch, 137. 
 
 Polybius, 228. 
 
 Post, 222. 
 
 Postage, 227. 
 
 Postage stamps, 226. 
 
 Postal systems, 223-228. 
 
 Potter, Humphrey, 64, 69. 
 
 Power-loom, 119. 
 
 Printing, 218. 
 
 Propellers, 184. 
 
 Pueblo loom, 113. 
 
 Quipu, 204. 
 
 Pack (for burdens), 145. 
 Paddle-wheel, 183, 184. 
 Paper-making, 218. 
 Papin, Denis, 61, 178. 
 Papyrus, 212. 
 Parchment, 214. 
 Parsons, C. A., 71. 
 Pendulum, 200. 
 Penny postage, 227. 
 Percussion matches, 8. 
 Pergamus, king of, 214. 
 Pestle, 98. 
 Phillipides, 224. 
 Phoenicians, 171, 210. 
 
 Radiators, 25. 
 
 Raft, 1 68. 
 
 REAPER, history of, 85-96. 
 
 Richaud, 22. 
 
 Reed (of loom), 115. 
 
 Reed (for writing), 213. 
 
 Reel (for reaper), 90. 
 
 Renaissance, 139. 
 
 Robert F. Stockton, 186. 
 
 Roller-mill (for flour), 107. 
 
 Romans (ancient), 18, 57, 86, 
 
 134, 152, 171, 196, 215, 225. 
 Rudder, 169, 170, 174. 
 Rumsey, James, 180.
 
 INDEX 
 
 247 
 
 s 
 
 Safety-match, 12. 
 
 Safety-valve, 61. 
 
 Sail, 168. 
 
 St. Paul's (cathedral), 139. 
 
 St. Peter's (cathedral), 139. 
 
 Screw-propeller, 184. 
 
 Scythe, 86. 
 
 Scythe cradle, 88. 
 
 Self-raking reaper, 93. 
 
 Self-binding reaper, 94. 
 
 Seward, W. H. (quoted), 83. 
 
 Share (of plow), 75. 
 
 " Shay, wonderful one hoss," 
 
 153- 
 
 Shed (of cloth), 113. 
 Shuttle, 115, 116. 
 Shuttle-race, 118. 
 Sickle, 85. 
 Sledge, 147. 
 Smelting, 42. 
 Smoke, 35. 
 
 Somerset, Edward, 58. 
 Spinning Jenny, 119. 
 Spit (for cooking), 15. 
 Spokes, 151. 
 Spring (of clock), 199. 
 Spring (of vehicle), 155. 
 Stamps (postage), 226. 
 Steam, 54. 
 Steamboat, development, 177- 
 
 186. 
 
 Steam-carriage, 156. 
 STEAM-ENGINE, history of, 54- 
 
 72. 
 
 Steam-plow, 84. 
 Steam-turbine, 71. 
 Steel, 51. 
 
 Stephenson, George, 159. 
 Stevens, John, 184. 
 Stone Age, 38. 
 Stone dwelling, 127. 
 STOVE, history of, 13-27. 
 Strike-a-Iight, 8. 
 Sturgeon, William, 233. 
 Sun dial, 188. 
 Syllable-sounds, 208. 
 Symington, William, 182. 
 Syrian plow, 75. 
 
 Tapers, 33. 
 
 Telegraph, 228-239. 
 
 Telephone, 239-241. 
 
 Tiller, 173. 
 
 Tinder, 7. 
 
 Torch, 29, 31. 
 
 Tradition, 203. 
 
 Travail, 147. 
 
 Trevethick, Richard, 158, 162. 
 
 Trireme, 172. 
 
 Turbine (steam), 71. 
 
 Types, moveable, 220. 
 
 United States, 80, 91, 106, 178, 
 1 80. 
 
 Vail, Alfred, 235. 
 Vedas, 203. 
 Vienna bread, 106. 
 Volume, 213.
 
 24B 
 
 INDEX 
 
 \v 
 
 Walker, John, 10. 
 Warming pan, 17, 22. 
 Warp, 112. 
 Watches, 199. 
 Water-clock, 191-195. 
 Water-mill, 103. 
 Watt, James, 67, 70, 158. 
 Weaver-bird, no. 
 Webster, Daniel, 81. 
 Weft, 112. 
 
 Weight-clock, 196-199. 
 Wheatstone, Professor, 239. 
 Wheel, development of, 147- 
 151. 
 
 Wheel-barrow, 148. 
 
 Wicks, 30, 34. 
 
 Wigwams, 123. 
 
 Wireless telegraph, 241. 
 
 Wireless telephone, 241. 
 
 Wood, Jethro, 82. 
 
 Worcester, Marquis of, 58, 78, 
 
 230. 
 Wrought iron, 43. 
 
 Yarn beam, no. 
 
 Zuni Indians, 125.
 
 T 
 4-7 
 
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